Haven't Ordered Your Holiday Kindle Yet? Never Mind
This story was written by Staci D. Kramer.
*Amazon* is promoting the heck out of its Kindle digital reader on its front page and across the e-commerce site but won't be shipping any until well into Q109. The current wait time: 11-13 weeks. Dan Frommer confirmed with the company that it has sold out of the devices. There's also this note on the site: "Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is sold out. Please ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. We prioritize orders on a first come, first served basis. This item will arrive after December 24." Dan's take: anyone placing an order now will be getting Kindle 2.0, the updated reader the company said was possible "sometime next year at the earliest." Or Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) could be having the same supply problems it ran into early on.
One possibility: Oprah's recent endorsement and the accompanying $50 discount offer sold off existing supplies faster than Amazon had forecast. Analysts were predicting a big holiday season for Kindle this year; it may be that Christmas came early this year and that Amazon met those sale predictions but simply won't be able to go much further. Another: the lure of Kindle 2.0 will keep sales revved up and a failure to deliver that version will result in a slew of cancellations.
Kindle library: Meanwhile, the only gauge of Kindle's growth usually offered by Amazonthe size of its libraryhas topped 190,000, more than double the 90,000 at launch last November. When I interviewed Amazon chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos in May, the number of titles stood at 125,000. (Rafat and I each use Kindles so tend to notice the library expansionand limits.)
Photo Credit: dailylifeofmojo
By Staci D. Kramer