No one ever said that mobile gadget consumers aren’t still price-conscious consumers.
Despite the voracious customer appetite for anything cool and cutting edge in the tech space – no matter how expensive – reduced prices still translate to an increase in sales, as illustrated by Amazon’s notable success in the weeks that followed a significant price reduction for the Kindle.
During the first full month of the e-reader’s price reduction, sales of the Kindle have risen three-fold.
“We’ve reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle-the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189,” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books-astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.”
In addition to the lower price of the popular product, the popularity boom of electronic-books and other digital content is fueling a revolution in how consumers absorb and consume reading material. The Association of American Publishers, for example, indicates that e-book sales grew 163 percent in the month of May and 207 percent year-to-date through May.
Kindle book sales in May and year-to-date through May exceeded those growth rates.
“Over the past three months,” Amazon observed in a press release regarding the Kindle’s retail achievements, “for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books.”
Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. This is across Amazon.com’s entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
