It seems that the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader are doing much better than people expect, or at least the Vice President of Business Development at Oxford University Press seems to think so.
Evan Schnittman, the man behind the theory, thinks that the sales of the next-generation e-book readers will balloon to 1,000,000 units in 2008. This number comes without any communication with Sony or Amazon regarding the matter, and is based on strict (and loose) interpretation of different figures.
The 1,000,000 figure is a bit outlandish given that the Kindle has sold no more than 50,000 units since its release at the end of 2007. With the 2008 year halfway over, there would need a significant sales boost to hit the 1,000,000 mark, combined with Sony Reader sales.
Schnittman's figure comes from a variety of different avenues. He analyzes the production process and how many units the factories can crank out, especially compared to its sales, which is significant given the Kindle was sold out for a length of time. Schnittman also takes a deep look e-book sales using data obtained from a speech by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, as well as hard data provided publicly by Amazon.
Despite how many e-book readers are moved this year, the big, overlying question is whether this e-ink technology could possibly replace the book. The answer, at least for the time being, is undoubtably no.
