Technologizer

Once Again, the Kindle Is Selling Like an Unspecified Number of Hotcakes

Amazon is trumpeting Kindle sales without actually telling us much about Kindle sales.

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us, and Amazon wants us to know that its ever-expanding line of Kindles sold well. Great news!

But as usual, the company isn’t willing to share actual numbers. So it’s bragging in a vague manner which basically boils down to “the Kindle is selling better than ever.”

Milestones for Kindle sales this holiday shopping weekend include:

  • Cyber Monday 2012 was the biggest day ever for Kindle sales worldwide.
  • The top 4 spots on the worldwide Amazon best sellers list since launch nearly three months ago are Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fires.
  • To celebrate Cyber Monday, Amazon.com offered a special deal—just $129 for the Kindle Fire. Customers flocked to the deal, making this the biggest Cyber Monday deal ever for Amazon.com.
  • Kindle Fire HD is the most gifted and most wished for product on Amazon worldwide since launch.
  • 9 out of the top 10 best-selling products on Amazon worldwide since 9/6 are Kindles, Kindle accessories and digital content.

By not revealing actual numbers, Amazon prevents anyone from answering the most interesting single question at the moment: How are the Kindle Fire models doing now that they’re competing with Apple’s iPad Mini?

Apple, which usually does talk in terms of specific numbers, told us that it sold three million iPad Mini units iPads of all sorts in the first weekend after the iPad Mini’s release. [CORRECTION: In the first version of the post, I said that Apple sold three million Minis.] It doesn’t seem wildly presumptuous to assume that the Kindle Fire isn’t selling faster than that — if a Kindle ever does better than the iPad, Amazon will surely break its vow of silence — but I’d love to know how it stacked up.

I don’t mean to yank Amazon’s chain too hard: As far as I know, Barnes & Noble, Google, Samsung and other tabletmakers haven’t released hard numbers, either. Still, it’ll be a big day for the tablet market when Amazon — or anyone else who isn’t Apple — is proud enough of a device’s sales to, you know, tell us what they are.