There’s been some discouraging headlines. For example, Amazon’s facing new competition for its color Kindle Fire tablets from Google’s new Nexus 7, and there’s even a rumor that Apple will release an “iPad Mini”. “[A]nalysts are beginning to wonder how Amazon will continue to fare in the hyper-competitive market,” warns the executive editor at C|Net, citing an investment analyst who’s just downgraded Amazon’s stock. But that’s only the beginning of the bad news for Amazon…
Target stores have stopped carrying all Kindles, C|Net notes, which obviously gives Amazon fewer places to find new customers. And Amazon’s Kindle Fire may also be stealing attention away from Amazon’s black-and-white e-ink Kindles, according to a new theory from Kevin Kopelman, an analyst at the Cowen Group. According to C|Net’s article, he’s now predicting that Amazon’s Kindle sales will
grow by just 3% in 2012, where before he’d been estimating a massive 30% increase. He’s now calling that “unrealistic,” citing Amazon’s delay in releasing any new Kindles — though he still expects
16.3 million Kindles to be sold in 2012.
It’s not just Google and Apple that are threatening Amazon’s market share. There’s also some interesting statistics about the Kindle’s biggest competitor, the Nook. According to this article, it now accounts for about 25% to 30% of the ebook market. Over the last year, they’ve sold more than twice as many ebooks as the year before, reporting an increase of 119%. Sales of the Nook itself increased by 45%, and Nook-and-ebook sales together increased by even more, up 47.7%, to a total of $1.3 billion!
It’s not just one analyst who’s souring on Amazon’s growth prospects. Another analyst at Pacific Crest has studied Amazon’s supply chain, and is now estimating that Amazon will sell 3 million fewer Kindles than he’d originally expected earlier in the year. He’s still predicting that Amazon could sell up to 15 million Kindle Fires, according to this article at Forbes. And their technology reporter puts all this speculation into perspective. “[W]e will never know if his unit forecasts are right or not..
“Amazon does not report unit sales figures.”