Why doesn't Amazon release sales figures?? Every company on Wall Street has to reveal numbers.
Amazon releases overall numbers for the company, but they don't release numbers for specific products for competitive reasons. It's a bit more difficult for potential competitors to challenge in a new product category if they don't know exactly how many are currently being sold. Why make it any easier? That's just the way Bezos thinks.
As for selling the Fire at little or no profit, Amazon has a history of doing this in the early stages of a new product category. For example, when they first introduced the Kindle, they advertised that many NY Times bestsellers would be available at $9.99 each. This price was below Amazon's cost. Bezos believes that, in the early days of a new product category, market share is key, and he used this price point to help in their efforts to dominate the market.
Since then, the big 6 publishers have switched to agency pricing, and Amazon is now actually making a profit on such titles. Amazon's share of the e-ink book reader market has dropped a bit, but they still dominate. Their initial investment in market share is paying off.
Whatever there is to say about the Fire and its sales today (half-baked and over-hyped), this discussion is backward-looking. there should be no doubt that Amazon will be coming out with new, improved models this year and in the future. At some point the Fire will be quite good and still very inexpensive. there will likely be a 10" model too. it's bound to be popular.
what is harder to predict is whether it will remain basically an Amazon shopping applicance, with a limited Amazon ecosystem focused on that as now (Amazon Prime, etc.), or expand into more of a general purpose device. and will Amazon try to set up its own "social" services to further compete with Google, or partner with an existing player (Facebook would be ideal for them, but Yahoo would be more likely)?
i definitely expect Facebook to enter the tablet market too this year or next with its own inexpensive brand (they could buy RIM with stock and get the QNX OS), obviously focused on its social services, but expanding into what? Facebook and Google (with its Motorola hardware and, btw, whatever happened to Chromebooks?) are mortal enemies now, that's clear. and Amazon could turn that war into triangular combat, three of them trying to out manuver each other with loss-leader hardware and monetized services of all kinds.
but while they are cutting each other to pieces, Apple will continue on a different ecosystem model. iTunes, iLife, iCloud, and maybe iWork (enterprise)/iBooks (education) are the core of the Apple ecosystem and all its integrated hardware. what Apple defninitely does not do itself is "social," instead mainly supporting the others' services.
so Apple's tablet market share % measured by units is certain to decline. but its profit % share measured by $'s very well might continue to dominate.
the rest of the Android OEM's products? they'll just be commodity cheap stuff, mainly feeding the telcos needs for service contract sales. Sony and Samsung will try to get their own hardware-based ecosystems going, but consumers outside Japan/Korea won't care because they have nothing like Apple's software to go with it. and Microsoft/Nokia? well, they missed the train.
Woo hoo! My AMZN 185 put options just made me a bunch of money. Their income was dramatically below forecasts for last quarter and their projections are below previous forecasts.
Relevant to this thread, they, as usual, refused to release Kindle Fire numbers. They did say that total Kindle numbers were up 177% from the previous year.
Let's analyze that. The iPad was up something like 111% from the previous year. If their old-line Kindle products did about the same, that means that the Fire was only about 24% of the total (66/277). Since AMZN said that they were selling Kindles at about 1 M per week for the 6 weeks after Fire launch, that means that they sold about 1.4 M Kindle Fires.
Now, I suspect that the non-Fire Kindles were not up 111% like the iPad, so the total number of Kindle Fires would be higher. But It's almost certainly less than 3 M.
If my local Best Buy is any indication, the return rate is 32 % (per a Geek Squad staffer). As of this last Saturday they still had over 100 Fires sitting in inventory. Sales slowed dramatically after Christmas They don't do the Fire any favors by having the end cap dispay sitting just 8ft from the iPads. It's not a bad device but a tablet in appearance only.
If my local Best Buy is any indication, the return rate is 32 % (per a Geek Squad staffer). As of this last Saturday they still had over 100 Fires sitting in inventory. Sales slowed dramatically after Christmas They don't do the Fire any favors by having the end cap dispay sitting just 8ft from the iPads. It's not a bad device but a tablet in appearance only.
I've been saying for a couple of months now that I think Amazon will kill the Fire because of a dearth of sales after the holiday season.
Maybe it'll become an item that they only build for the holidays... but I doubt it.
I have seen two in "regular use." One was the kid at Starbucks who looks like he gets beaten up a lot already... and the KF won't help matters.
The other was a woman on the plane who didn't think she could get an iPad because they use a PC. (She benefits from a smaller device given that she stuffs it in her purse.)
Comments
Why doesn't Amazon release sales figures?? Every company on Wall Street has to reveal numbers.
Amazon releases overall numbers for the company, but they don't release numbers for specific products for competitive reasons. It's a bit more difficult for potential competitors to challenge in a new product category if they don't know exactly how many are currently being sold. Why make it any easier? That's just the way Bezos thinks.
As for selling the Fire at little or no profit, Amazon has a history of doing this in the early stages of a new product category. For example, when they first introduced the Kindle, they advertised that many NY Times bestsellers would be available at $9.99 each. This price was below Amazon's cost. Bezos believes that, in the early days of a new product category, market share is key, and he used this price point to help in their efforts to dominate the market.
Since then, the big 6 publishers have switched to agency pricing, and Amazon is now actually making a profit on such titles. Amazon's share of the e-ink book reader market has dropped a bit, but they still dominate. Their initial investment in market share is paying off.
what is harder to predict is whether it will remain basically an Amazon shopping applicance, with a limited Amazon ecosystem focused on that as now (Amazon Prime, etc.), or expand into more of a general purpose device. and will Amazon try to set up its own "social" services to further compete with Google, or partner with an existing player (Facebook would be ideal for them, but Yahoo would be more likely)?
i definitely expect Facebook to enter the tablet market too this year or next with its own inexpensive brand (they could buy RIM with stock and get the QNX OS), obviously focused on its social services, but expanding into what? Facebook and Google (with its Motorola hardware and, btw, whatever happened to Chromebooks?) are mortal enemies now, that's clear. and Amazon could turn that war into triangular combat, three of them trying to out manuver each other with loss-leader hardware and monetized services of all kinds.
but while they are cutting each other to pieces, Apple will continue on a different ecosystem model. iTunes, iLife, iCloud, and maybe iWork (enterprise)/iBooks (education) are the core of the Apple ecosystem and all its integrated hardware. what Apple defninitely does not do itself is "social," instead mainly supporting the others' services.
so Apple's tablet market share % measured by units is certain to decline. but its profit % share measured by $'s very well might continue to dominate.
the rest of the Android OEM's products? they'll just be commodity cheap stuff, mainly feeding the telcos needs for service contract sales. Sony and Samsung will try to get their own hardware-based ecosystems going, but consumers outside Japan/Korea won't care because they have nothing like Apple's software to go with it. and Microsoft/Nokia? well, they missed the train.
Relevant to this thread, they, as usual, refused to release Kindle Fire numbers. They did say that total Kindle numbers were up 177% from the previous year.
Let's analyze that. The iPad was up something like 111% from the previous year. If their old-line Kindle products did about the same, that means that the Fire was only about 24% of the total (66/277). Since AMZN said that they were selling Kindles at about 1 M per week for the 6 weeks after Fire launch, that means that they sold about 1.4 M Kindle Fires.
Now, I suspect that the non-Fire Kindles were not up 111% like the iPad, so the total number of Kindle Fires would be higher. But It's almost certainly less than 3 M.
If my local Best Buy is any indication, the return rate is 32 % (per a Geek Squad staffer). As of this last Saturday they still had over 100 Fires sitting in inventory. Sales slowed dramatically after Christmas They don't do the Fire any favors by having the end cap dispay sitting just 8ft from the iPads. It's not a bad device but a tablet in appearance only.
I've been saying for a couple of months now that I think Amazon will kill the Fire because of a dearth of sales after the holiday season.
Maybe it'll become an item that they only build for the holidays... but I doubt it.
I have seen two in "regular use." One was the kid at Starbucks who looks like he gets beaten up a lot already... and the KF won't help matters.
The other was a woman on the plane who didn't think she could get an iPad because they use a PC. (She benefits from a smaller device given that she stuffs it in her purse.)
Ok, this just made me laugh out loud!