Re: Kindle first-year sales

At 1:41 AM +0000 12/14/07, John Landahl wrote:
A thread on the MobileRead forums contains a link to a brief summary of a
Forrester report
saying that Amazon "...will be lucky to sell more than 50,000 units in its
first year."


Hmmm. While I've not followed everything about the Kindle, from what I've
seen Amazon is the only place you can purchase one (except for aftermarket
sales on ebay and the like), and they aren't really discounting them, right?

So 50,000 at $400 each is $20 million.

What was Amazon's development costs? Do we know? All I can find is that it
took 3 years to develop.

If its less than $10 million, I think you would have to call the Kindle a
success, at least financially. I'm sure that Amazon is at least doubling
the manufacturing costs per unit, and its probably doing much more than
that.

If the Sony machine is $300 and they are selling them through traditional
retailers, I'd guess that their manufacturing costs couldn't be more than
30% or 40% of retail, and probably much less.

Does anyone have any insights on these costs?

I'm curious!

Kent




------------------------------------------------------
Post a message:   ebook-community [[at]] *
Unsubscribe:      ebook-community-unsubscribe [[at]] *
Switch to digest: ebook-community-digest [[at]] *
Switch to normal: ebook-community-normal [[at]] *
Put mail on hold: ebook-community-nomail [[at]] *
Administrator:    ebook-community-owner [[at]] *

(* == yahoogroups.com)
------------------------------------------------------- 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:[email protected] 
    mailto:ebook-community-fullfeatured-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ebook-community-unsubscribe-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/