Amazon Reports Big Kindle Sales Over Black Friday

Posted on December 1, 2014

Amazon announced today that sales of the Kindle are booming due to Black Friday purchases. The ecommerce retailer also said that sales of the Kindle Fire tablet have also increased substantially.

Although Amazon does not announce exact sales figures, it does usually report when sales of a product are doing especially well. Sales of both the Kindle and the Kindle Fire have increased by a significant amount each year. Fire tablet sales this Black Friday are up more than 3x the sales figures of last year. Kindle ereaders sales have increased fourfold. The company also announced that J.D. Power named Amazon as the "Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Tablets," beating out quite a few major competitors.

The Kindle and the Kindle Fire are excellent products, but we think the increased sales are in part due to the big price breaks Amazon is giving customers. For Cyber Monday Amazon Fire TV is only $69. The ereader and tablets also had big discounts on Black Friday.

Amazon's new Fire TV device is meant to compete with the Roku, Apple TV and Google's Chromecast. Roku dominates the market, it will be interesting to see how Fire TV fares against it. Dave Limp, Senior Vice President, Amazon Devices, said in a statement, "This holiday there are going to be a lot of customers opening up new Amazon devices." He said the company was energized by the growth in sales of the tablets and ereaders.

Amazon warned investors that it may not show a profit this quarter. The company estimated net sales of between $27.3 billion and $30.3 billion, which would show growth between 7% and 18% cover fourth quarter, 2013. It also projected a possible loss of $570 million, although the forecast said it could also make a profit of up to $430 million. That's a really big range for profit and loss in one quarter. Last year, the company showed a profit of $530 million in the fourth quarter.