Analyst: Amazon Kindle sales could reach $1.2B by 2010

As Amazon prepares to roll out the next-generation version of Kindle, its electronic book reader, a top analyst tried to crack open the company's tightly held sales data on the device.

Mark Mahaney of Citigroup estimated that Amazon sold 500,000 Kindles last year (he did so by piecing together information from Sprint Nextel, which powers Kindle's wireless feature, and other sources). Mahaney said sales of the e-reader could reach $1.2 billion by 2010.

Amazon is generating significant buzz around the Kindle 2.0 ahead of its anticipated unveiling next week. The company called an "important" press conference with Jeff Bezos on Feb. 9 at a New York library -- and while the company hasn't said what the topic is -- it's widely assumed to be the new Kindle.

So far all the chatter around Kindle is sucking media oxygen away from other electronic readers, which are also lining up announcements around Feb. 9 (the start of an O'Reilly publishing conference in New York).

Plastic Logic, a company developing a thin, paper pad-sized e-reader, plans to announce publishing partners at the conference. And I'm told that a venture called Shortcovers, which is developing a website and iPhone application for books, magazines, newspapers and blogs, is also gearing up for an early February launch.

The $359 Kindle, which has been sold out for a couple months, also faces competition from Sony's e-book reader, various iPhone applications and other devices coming on the market. So with Kindle 2.0, Amazon will be clearly be trying to cement its place as a leader in the nascent e-book market.

About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

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