Market reports

According to a new survey by PewInternet, the share of adults in the US who own an e-reader nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January. This comes after a period (from mid-2011 till the autumn) in which there was not much change in e-reader ownership.

Read more (and download the full survey results) here

Amazon announced that the 2011 holiday period was a big success for the Kindle family. Customers bought "well over" 1 million Kindle devices per week, and the top three spots on Amazon.com's best seller charts are held by the Kindle Fire, the Kindle Touch and the Kindle 2011. The Kindle Fire is also the most gifted and most wished for product for 13 weeks in a row.

Kindle is also the best selling product on Amazon's UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy stores. Christmas day was the best day ever for Kindle book downloads.

Amazon announced that in the past three weeks they have sold over 1 million Kindle devices each week. This includes the complete range of Kindles - the Kindle Fire, the Kindle Touch, the Kindle 2011 and the Kindle Keyboard and Keyboard DX that are still selling.

We know that the Fire is the best selling of all, but unfortunately we do not know the exact breakdown between the various models...

Amazon reports good Black Friday Kindle sales - in fact they say total Kindle sales increased 4X compared to last year. The Kindle Fire is still Amazon's best selling product - for over 8 weeks in a row (since its introduction on September 28th).

Amazon wouldn't release any figures, but they did say that even before the weekend they sold "millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire". Interestingly, they say that a lot of customers are buying multiple Kindles (some probably as gifts to others).

IDTechEx published an interesting post in which they forecast that the e-reader market will grow from 30 million units in 2011 (about $750 million in revenue) to 70-90 million units (or $1.7 billion to $2.2 billion) in 2017. IDTechEx says that 70 million units will come from the leisure reading market mostly. If the education and business market takes off, it may mean another 20 million units per year in 2017.

IDTechEx says that text books for schools could be a very large opportunity - and may even double the sales of leisure reading. This isn't taken into account in the optimistic scenario. IDTechEx also expects new display technologies such as Liquavista's (now Samsung) Electrowetting technology and Qualcomm's Mirasol to enter the market soon.

Global Industry Analysts announced a new report (E-Readers: A Global Strategic Business Report) in which they provide a comprehensive review of market trends, issues, drivers, company profiles, mergers, acquisitions and other strategic industry activities. GIA forecasts that by 2017, the global e-reader market will grow to 53.87 million units.

Nielsen posted an interesting blog post in which they show recent data from their surveys, showing that 61% of all e-reader owners are now female - growing from 46% in Q3 2010. Smartphone owners are evenly split between males and females and tablet owners are primarily males.