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In a report to clients, analyst Mark Mahaney said Amazon could be on track to sell as many as 380 000 units of the Kindle this year. This would match the number of sales for the iPod digital music player in its first year on the market, leading the analyst to predict that the Kindle "is becoming the iPod of the book world."
Shares of Amazon rose more than 8% in morning trading Monday. The stock has jumped more than 10% since its second-quarter earnings report last month.
Amazon itself has given few specifics related to sales of the Kindle, which hit the market late last year.
The company has disclosed no actual sales data, only saying that the selection of titles available for the device has jumped 67% since its launch and the mix of books sold in the Kindle format has reached a double-digit percent in relation to total book sales on its site.
Mahaney had previously projected Kindle sales of 190 000 units this year. In his note Monday, he said "additional data points" caused him to revise his projection upwards. He noted that the Kindle remains at the top of the company's list of best-selling electronics products, with the number of customer reviews nearly doubling since early May.
He also cited a figure reported by the popular blog TechCrunch earlier this month, which said that Amazon has sold 240 000 Kindle devices since its launch. The report cited an unnamed source "close to Amazon."
Mahaney predicted that the Kindle will likely top the lists of holiday "gadget gifts" this year. He warned that his projections do not account for a possible launch of an updated version of the device.
- Dow Jones
