Their hardware may not be magical or revolutionary, but you have to hand it to Amazon. They do know how to rock the e-book market. According to CNET's David Carnoy, Apple's iPad and iBook Store might be the new hotness, but despite the hype surrounding the device and Cupertino's new literary initiative, Amazon still controls approximately 70-80% of the e-book market.
If our calculations are correct, that's one heck of a lot of copies of A Million Little Pieces.
Carnoy sat down with Amazon's Ian Freed to talk about the latest iteration of the Kindle, and while Freed did indeed focus on the e-reader, the conversation also swayed to other topics, such as his impressions of Amazon's device versus the iPad.
"With regard to the iPad, it's a totally different product," said Freed. "I mean, the product is a general-purpose tablet. We love that product because people use their iPads to buy a lot of products on Amazon. It's a tailwind for our e-commerce business."
When asked who, if Amazon has 70-80% of all e-book sales, controls the remaining 20-30% of the market. Carnoy cited that both Apple and Barnes & Noble have both declared themselves to be in control of the remaining market share. Freed gave a fairly comprehensive, if not definitive response to Carnoy's question, being careful to defend his company's calculations:
"Honestly, something doesn't add up because we're pretty sure we're 70 to 80 percent of the market," Freed stated. "So, something, somewhere isn't quite working right. I encourage you to do some more research. Obviously, from the beginning of Amazon we've been very metrics-focused and we don't typically throw out numbers we don't firmly believe in. Take that 70 to 80 percent number and add up all the others and something somewhere isn't going to add up."
Perhaps more research will be just the thing. After all, with the having been on the market for just under sixth months, and the iBook Store in much the same boat, it seems to us that perhaps Amazon tooting their own horn over their current domination of the e-book market might be a wee bit premature.
