Kindle To be 10% of Amazon Sales in 2012?

When Kindle was released to the market a few years ago, many folks were skeptical about its future. The e-book industry had become stagnant at the time. Market leaders such as Sony were not doing enough to breathe new life to the market. Fast forward a few years and Amazon is already selling more e-books than paper books. The company has managed to solidify its position as the #1 e-reader maker. Its online shopping portal has been a great vehicle to promote the Kindle device to millions of Amazon customers everyday.

Credit: TechCrunch

According to a paper by Citi, Kindle will be responsible for 10% of Amazon’s total revenue in 2012. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney estimates that Amazon will sell around 17.5m Kindle units this year (could sell as many as 26m units in 2012). Mahaney also expects Amazon’s e-book sales to grow by as much as 140% in 2012.

Considering that the Kindle platform is a closed platform, Amazon will be keeping a lot of its customers over the long run. So this is a business that will keep on giving as long as Amazon is passionate about innovating and pushing the envelop in this industry. It will be interesting to see how Amazon’s upcoming dual and quad core tablets will affect these forecasts.