Despite all the attention paid to Apple’s iPad, the tablet sn’t is cheap, and Amazon’s Kindle is successfully exploiting that fact. The eSuperstore said its Kindle eReader sales have tripled recently and its sales of eBooks have exceeded its hardcover book sales.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, “We’ve reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle–the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189.” The eSuperstore dropped the 6-inch Kindle price on June 21 (and then dropped the price of the Kindle DX on July 1 by $110 to $379).
The Amazon founder also added, “… even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.”
Over the past 3 months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon sold, it sold 143 Kindle eBooks.
Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon sold, it sold 180 Kindle eBooks (free Kindle eBooks are excluded).
Amazon also sold more than 3 times as many Kindle eBooks in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009.
Source: Amazon
