Amazon sells millions of Kindles, but analyst still doubts it will meet expectations - San Jose Mercury News
Amazon celebrated its “best holiday ever” Thursday, but a Goldman Sachs analyst said the company’s sale of millions of Kindles will not be enough to meet analysts’ expectations.
Amazon claimed in a news release Thursday that it sold more than a million Kindle devices every week in December, leading to projections of well more than 4 million Kindle sales for the month. Amazon does not release specific sales numbers for its e-readers, but it also announced that the Kindle Fire — a $199 tablet computer that was introduced Nov. 15 — was the highest-selling product on Amazon.com. as well as the Seattle company’s European properties.
“We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle,” Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in the news release.
Amazon earlier had said that Nov. 25, the post-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza known as Black Friday, was its best Kindle sales day ever, with customers purchasing four times as many Kindles than on Black Friday 2010.
Despite Amazon’s report of robust sales for its signature electronic devices, Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini said in a report Thursday that Amazon will not meet analysts’ projections of 40 percent growth in fourth-quarter sales.
Amazon’s revenue may rise 38 percent from a year earlier to $17.9 billion, Bellini estimated based on data from comScore. That total would not meet the $18.2 billion average analyst estimate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News.