Amazon seen with 61% of e-book market, Apple under 5%
Amazon still has a comfortable lead over Apple and other rivals in the US e-book market, an analysis by RR Bowker found. The group disputes both claims by Amazon and said Amazon’s Kindle Store controlled 61 percent of e-book downloads, or 10 to 20 percent less than Amazon itself thought. Barnes & Noble’s store has 20 percent where Sony has five percent.
I don’t see what Amazon has to crow about. Sure – these numbers contradict Apple’s numbers – but once you really look at them, Amazon has more of a problem than they think.
The Kindle was released in November 2007 and in the thirty months that they’ve had pretty much a lead in the market, they’ve managed a 61% market share. Not too shabby. Kindle has a lead which shows in the quality of the content in their store – they have more and better books. And they’re on Kindle (hardware), Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android.
The iPad was released in March 2010 and in the four months since release, they’ve managed nearly a 5% market share. This is through their iBooks app which was released on iPad and last month came to iPhone as well.
It’s evident Apple likes the eBook market. I’d be nervous about crowing about market share with such shaky numbers in a market where Apple has only been operating for just over 1 quarter.