Mike Elgan Wonders About Kindle Numbers

My colleague Jason M. forwarded me a link to this blog post by Computerworld's Mike Elgan. On the surface, it sounds like the same old banter about Amazon and why aren't they telling us how many Kindle's they've sold so far. In fact, at least one person who commented on the post ("HeavyG") calls Elgan out for piling on like this. HeavyG goes on to suggest that Amazon should continue to keep this a secret just to see "how many folks get their panties in a bunch." HeavyG is a Kindle owner and doesn't care whether the number of units sold is "10,000 or 100,000 or 1,00,000." Well said, sort of...

For HeavyG's sake, I hope the number is on the high end, not the low end. After all, if HeavyG really likes the Kindle, a small base will be the kiss of death for it in the long run. How long do you think Amazon (or any other company, for that matter) would continue touting and producing this device if the base were to remain in the thousands? Not very long.

But back to the Elgan post... He makes a good point about why Amazon would want to continue stoking demand with premium, front-and-center placement of it on their home page, particularly when supply can't keep up with demand as it is. Why not ease off the throttle a bit till there's an abundant supply of the devices on-hand and then dial up the on-site promotional efforts again. One reason might be that this step would cause even more conspiracy theorists (like myself) to speculate that Amazon is backing off the device and not as excited about it as they once were. That would probably be more damaging to momentum than the out-of-stock situation they've endured since day one, I suppose.

Four months into this now, I still have the same question Elgan has: How many are out there? What's the harm in saying? Apple, one of the most secretive tech companies on the planet, seems to be quite comfortable stating the numbers of iPods they've sold and iTunes songs that have been downloaded. Of course, those numbers are enormous and it's probably fun to announce them, particularly when you're the market share king. That point alone probably says a lot about the reason for the Kindle number silence...