Amazon.com Inc., The Global Leader in e-Commerce

By -
Amazon.com Inc., the global leader in e-commerce, reported in a press release that customers have been buying “well over” one million Kindle devices a week, for three consecutive weeks now. The tally of more than a million devices is across all the products in the Kindle family, including Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, Kindle Wi-Fi, and Kindle 3G with Keyboard. 

In Amazon’s press release, Dave Limp, an executive for the company, called Kindle Fire “the most successful product” Amazon has ever launched and asserted that customers are buying the product because of its simplicity. He also claimed that Kindle Fire makes it “easy [for users] to do the things they love” such as watching TV reruns and movies, surfing the Internet, reading, enjoying music, and playing games. 

Even though Amazon did not disclose the actual sales numbers for each device within the Kindle family, the press release was obviously aimed at promoting Kindle Fire, especially in the wake of some recent negative press where people have claimed to be disappointed with Kindle Fire, comparing it to the Apple iPad (the price of which starts at $499, a full 250% higher than the $199 Kindle Fire). 

Unfortunately, Amazon itself has muddied the water a bit by comparing Kindle Fire with the 
iPad in its product description, which says that Kindle Fire has a “vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle – same as an iPad.” As a result, the Amazon stock has been taking a hit for the past week. 

In a clear attempt to do damage control and instill confidence in both investors and customers, 
Mr. Limp also said that Amazon is seeing many people buying not just the newly released 
Kindle Fire tablet but also the original Kindle and the Kindle Touch e-reader.
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amazon's Fire Phone Misfires?

By -
Image
Last week, Amazon unveiled the much-anticipated or at least   much-hyped 3D smart phone,  following up with an email to all its customers introducing the phone with the slogan "The First Smartphone Designed by Amazon". That slogan sounds a bit strange since the Amazon brand is not associated with product design excellence so "the first blah designed by Amazon" does not really carry much weight with us - Amazon did pioneer the eBook reader business with Kindle and dominates it, but that's not because of its elegant design, more because of ready availability of the content at bargain prices, which in turn is based on  Amazon’s willingness to sell both the device and eBooks at a loss to gain market share.  Brilliant business strategy, perhaps, but IMHO, that does not set Amazon as a product design excellence star. All that slogan does is tell us that Amazon is not too proud to be (just) a company that efficiently operates warehouses and packs & deliv...
Read more

Amazon's Fire Dwindles

By -
Image
In its quarterly earnings announcement yesterday, Seattle based Amazon.com, the largest US eCommerce company, admitted that it has missed bith revenue and profit estimates for Q3, 2014. These disappointing third-quarter results see the online retailer’s shares at 9 percent lower than the 7 to 18 percent revenue growth that was originally forecasted. This loss has taken more than $15 billion off of Amazon’s market value (now at $144.7 billion) and seen their stock plummet 13 percent since the poor Q2 results announced in July. Amazon is reporting losses around $437 million resulting from failed product launches and various acquisitions and expansions that take the ecommerce company further and further away from their original charter and core competency. Amazon continues to invest heavily in hardware devices, expanding it to include a phone and dropping the word "Kindle" from their Tablet line of products, simplifying it to just Fire. However,  the hyped...
Read more

Amazon Asks KDP Authors to write to Hachette CEO, I wrote to both Jeff Bezos and Michael Pietsch instead

By -
Less than an hour ago, Amazon prompted KDP authors (like me) to write an email to  Hachette CEO, Michael Pietsch,  supporting their point of view in their negotiation with Hachette.   It's interesting on how Amazon is finally realizing that it's bullying tactics towards traditional media corporations that are already facing financial challenges are no longer working, and given the enormous size of Amazon, the public now views Amazon with suspicion and as the bully.  While in its email Amazon makes some valid points about how lower cost will actually increase the size of the business by increasing volume, it fails to mention that lowering prices of popular, top-rated eBooks will also result in increased sales of the Kindle devices, eventually allowing it to sell those devices at profit rather than selling them as a cost. This is called vertical competition, consumers have a annual budget for books in their mind and if eBooks are lot cheaper than books, then the br...
Read more