In the midst of growing buzz around e-book readers and high-profile shortages from competing vendors, Amazon.com announced that November is the best sales month ever for its Kindle — even before Cyber Monday.
Amazon reports the Kindle continues to be the most wished for, the most gifted, and the number-one best-selling product across all product categories on Amazon.com. The latest generation Kindle — just released in October — is $259 and available for immediate shipment.
“Kindle is a great gift for anyone who loves to read, and it’s flying off the shelves faster than any other product Amazon sells,” said Ian Freed, vice president of Amazon Kindle. “We’re seeing lots of people buying from one to a handful of Kindles as gifts for friends or family, as well as many businesses and other organizations buying Kindles in large quantities for their employees or customers.”
Kindle vs Nook
Kindle is a portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a high-resolution six-inch electronic ink display. Kindle taps into the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones. The latest generation Kindle with global wireless enables readers to wirelessly download content in more than 100 countries and territories.
The Kindle is seeing plenty of competition coming into the market. But competing devices that analysts deemed as potential Kindle competitors for the 2009 holiday shopping season, namely Barnes & Noble’s nook and Sony’s Daily Reader, are facing untimely shortages. Barnes & Noble has sold out of its first batch of nooks amid what it called high demand — and new shipments won’t be available until after the holiday shopping season ends.
“As far as the Nook shortages, we don’t really know what’s going on,” said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret. “Barnes & Noble says its pre-orders are sold out, but how many pre-orders…