It is no secret that Amazon keeps all sales data private and never divulges that sales data on Kindle Fire and e-readers. An analyst from Morgan Stanley is trying to crack the code, and has some fairly interesting information.
In a report released last week, Morgan Stanley proclaimed that Amazon will sell $4.5 billion worth of Kindle e-readers and tablets this year, up 26% from 2012. This increase is due to more brand awareness, three new tablets, and an e-reader to be announced in September.
The report stated that “growth will slow next year, when the business will do $5 billion in sales, Morgan Stanley estimates, followed by similarly modest growth in 2015, when Amazon will do an estimated $5.5 billion in Kindle sales.”
$5.5 billion is a fair amount of sales but keep in mind that, in 2012, Amazon’s total revenue was $61 billion, with forecasts for 2013 somewhere between $73 and $76 billion. Most of this stems from ebooks and sales through their massive e-commerce system. The company has also been on an expansion tear, launching in Japan, China, and India.
One of the ways Amazon maximizes their revenue stream is to avoid paying taxes by having offices in Ireland and other tax friendly countries. In the UK alone, Amazon made £4 billion in revenues in 2012. In contrast, for the same fiscal period, they paid a total of £2.4 million in taxes. That’s £0.1m short of the government grant they received to expand the company’s warehouse operation in Scotland.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
