Citigroup recently upgraded Amazon, saying more kindles will be sold than previously thought. The leading etailers stock zoomed upwards on the news in fact.The analyst estimates Amazon will sell up to 380,000 Kindles in 2008, up from a previous forecast of 190,000. It expects Kindle-related revenue of $1 billion by 2010, compared with a previous view of $400 million to $750 million.
Many have surmised that Bezos wants the kindle to be the iPod or iPhone of books. Question is, do we already have an iPod of books and is it the iPhone?
Obviously there are trade offs between the iPhone and Kindles -- the iPhone has a color screen and worse battery life while the Kindle is better for reading large amounts of content.
I got to thinking about this as I noticed that Frommer Travel Guides are now available (press release) on the iPhone. This seems like a natural pap/service for either device.
The question I have is why Amazon still keeps the actual number of Kindles sold under wraps. Is it just embarrassing to say you haven't sold a million? Did Apple set such a high bar that Bezos is scared to tell us what the real numbers are?
The author owns shares in Amazon
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![ipod-itouch[1].jpg](http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/assets_c/2008/09/ipod-itouch[1]-thumb-150xauto-3531.jpg)
The killer feature of the iPhone's book reader Stanza is that you can browse and download from thousands of free books online. Both devices obviously have the potential to carry around hundreds of books, but only Stanza on the iPhone allows you to obtain a massive library in minutes for free (whereas on the Kindle it would run you hundreds of dollars).
The iPos for books is the regular cell phone you have right now.
Check out http://www.booksinmyphone.com - if you have internet access you can find and install books via their mobile site http://mobile.booksinmyphone.com
I've been reading from them for ages and now I'd hate to go back.
It will be very interesting to see how popular book reading becomes on a mobile phone. I suppose if you can watch TV on your phone and spend hours on your mobile social networks, you can read on it as well.
Is this a whole new market Apple will look to exploit next? Will Amazon build a category only to have Apple take it over?