Amazon, Sony market percentages published: Are they meaningful? Probably not.
By Paul Biba
Appearing on both Motley Fool and besttabletreview.com (who published this chart), these stats are from a study by iSuppli. As you can see from the graph, Amazon’s market is 45%, Sony’s is 30% and 25% goes to others. The question is, of course, what do they mean.
First, since Amazon doesn’t release, supposedly, its Kindle sales figures I don’t know how the analyst has come up with these percentages. Looks like some speculation to me.
Taking them as true, however, here’s what they mean to me.
First, Sony has done a pretty good job of garnering market share with inferior devices. The real killer in the ebook reader area is wireless, and Sony won’t have a wireless unit until sometime before Christmas. What the new unit unit will do to their market share can only be guessed at.
Second, the “others” really have a pretty big share at this point. With a full quarter of the market divided among a number of players this means that there is still a lot up for grabs. We will be seeing introductions by Plastic Logic, and others, soon so I would suspect there will be some major changes in these numbers. I also wonder if the “others” category includes the iPhone/iTouch. Given the popularity of ebook reading software in the App Store, I am a bit skeptical of these figures. Also don’t forget such outfits as Wattpad, who have a huge market in the lower end of the cellphone space. Are they included?
Third, these figures are based on a total market that is insignificant. Sales of ebooks are only about 1% of total book sales right now, and ereader sales are only a fraction of this, so there is huge room for growth. Market percentages of such a small market are fairly meaningless when you realize that the total market, over time, may be 10 or 100 times larger than what exists now.
Fourth, we don’t even know what the market is. Don’t forget that these figures are only for e-ink displays, which, in turn, are only a sub-set of possible ereading technologies. Who knows what will displace them in the future. PixelQi comes to mind, first of all, and so do such things as iPhones, iPods and possible iTablets, and Wattpad/cellphones, as I mentioned above. Add to this one of the things that most commentators miss – battery technology. Everyone talks about screens as if they were the driving force, but screens use power and power is the real limiting technology at the present time. If better battery life is developed that could open a whole new market in possible screen technologies that currently are not feasible to use.
With such a small current market, such a potentially huge future market, and with a technology that is still in its infancy, don’t get excited about the numbers published today.
Nevertheless, it is some interesting stuff and anything that gets people talking and thinking about ereading is good for us all.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:42 am
Sony devices are not ‘inferior’ to the Kindle just because they don’t have wireless, an expensive feature many people don’t need.
Kindles and Sonys are different, yes, but Sonys are sturdier, use the ePub format, and allow one to buy ebooks from a number of sources.
And Sony has never accessed my reader or computer to remove items I have bought and paid for.
Wireless may be the most important feature to *you*, but that doesn’t make a wireless-less device inferior.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:21 am
Overall I very much like Paul’s analysis, especially his skepticism about the numbers. Good job. I wonder if the “others” will catch up and expand that 25 percent.
As for “inferior,” there I’d respectfully disagree with Paul. Kate simply considered other features more important than the wireless.
In some ways, such as privacy and possibly the E Ink display (people have different opinions), the Sony may even be superior.
That said, I myself will welcome wireless if it’s well done.
Thanks,
David
(Proud PRS-505 owner)
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I think the data presented here is kind of misleading. What is more important is the formats the book readers can read. If a device with a closed format, like the Kindle, becomes dominant, then it will become very difficult for other players to become competitive. On the flip side, if an open standard… including (if we have to have it) and open DRM standard becomes dominant, then the market can remain very competitive.
Though I suspect it would be impossible to find the numbers, a far more interesting number would be how many books are sold in the various formats. I suspect that Kindle will still have the largest share, but I wonder how ePub is doing against legacy formats like Mobi and eReader?
–
Bill
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
The biggest advantage the Kindle has over Sony ist not wireless but the Amazon Store itself just as iTunes is for the iPod. Seamless integration is a very strong selling point and Amazon still has much more interesting books available than the Sony store (Granted, Sony has all those Google Books but, hey, 95% of them are quite obscure and the scan quality of the material is often very bad).
Sony’s eBook Library has gotten somewhat better with the new version but it still is a crapy piece of software (Witness the Mac-compatibility desaster). I’m sure that in the long run epub being open will win out but in the short run Amazon is the better deal.
The good news is that Sony seems to be earnest, churning out new machines, going for lower price points.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:09 am
I disagree that the Sony is inferior, and I chastise Paul for his American-centric-ness
This is my pet peeve of ebook commentary: the Kindle and other ‘wireless’ devices are, thus far, America-only propositions. Sony seems completely uninterested in bringing their new wireless reader to Canada, and Amazon continues non-Americans, not even letting them use the ipod app.
With that said, an Apple Tablet like the rumoured one, which would likely use plain old wifi like an iPod Touch, and run numerous formats through add-in apps, like an iPod Touch, could be the real game-changer, and could kill the Kinde completely. The game isn’t over yet! And wireless America may find that the rest of the excluded world comes up with something better since they can’t play the 3G game just yet anyway.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:50 am
It’s very hard to make sensible arguments based on this worldwide market share data without knowing the figures for the US (where Kindle is available) versus the rest of the world (no Kindle). I would suggest that if Kindle has 45% market share worldwide and isn’t even competing in much of the world, that it’s likely very dominant in the US. So in the one market where Kindle and Sony go head-to-head, Kindle is far ahead.
We’re still left with all the usual speculation and arguments about what that means in the future. Does the historical market share predict much about the future when Kindle will available more broadly, Sony has revamped products, Apple’s tablet arrives and other expected new entrants enter?