E-Pad Sales: Are Sales Strong Enough To Overcome Competition?

Securities analysts and research firms which cover the sales of e-readers and tablet computers continue to upgrade holiday shipment figures for most of the large brands. That means the purchase of the devices has overwhelmed the issue of which companies have the best market share. In other words, almost every firm in the sector is doing particularly well, and perhaps there are very few losers in the industry.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) has hinted that it will sell 8 million Kindles this year. That is 50% higher than many analyst estimates, according to Bloomberg.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad sales are expected to be spectacular which would push the company’s earnings well beyond consensus estimates.

Samsung’s sales of its Galaxy tablet are better than expected and so are sales of the Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) Nook.

Harris Research has just released data that 20% of Americans will own tablet PCs by 2014. Tens of millions of units would need to be sold in the meantime for that number to come true.

Rarely is the market flooded with a type of consumer electronics for which there is so much demand that almost any company that sells them does well, for awhile. This happened for a brief period with digital cameras, DVD players, and huge flat screen TVs. It took several years in each of these cases for a clear set of winners to emerge. Theses industries had surges in sales which lasted for one, two, or even three holiday seasons.

The conventional wisdom is that Apple will ruin the prospects of all other tablet PC markers. Amazon.com will push most other e-reader markers out of the market. This line of reasoning  should cause Barnes & Noble to drop out of the e-reader businesses quickly because it will never make money on its Nook product.

E-readers and table PCs have had immensely impressive sales this holiday season. The competition which will make these products a bad business for some of the firms in the industry may be far off.There are no monopolies when everyone does well.

Douglas A. McIntyre