Kindle Schmindle III

There was once a recurring Saturday Night Live character named Nathan Thurm. He’d sleaze his way out of answering questions with:

I didn’t say that! You said that! Did I say that? I didn’t say that! I think that’s so funny that you think I said that! I didn’t say that!

That’s how I imagine Amazon reacting, in two articles in which they try to deflate the blimpy sales numbers that have been bandied about for the abominable Kindle:

Andrea on Amazon.com and the business of online retail

Amazon officials gave McAdams Wright Ragen analysts the impression that high-end estimates on Kindle sales reported by TechCrunch and a Citigroup analyst are not reasonable. (See a previous blog post on the topic here and here.)

Amazon managers “told us that the Kindle is definitely selling very well, but they also said the analysts and reporters giving out these extremely high estimates ‘did not run them by company,'” Bueneman wrote.

And:

Amazon: Kindle Isn’t *That* Big A Hit; College Edition In The Works

Obviously, there’s more than one way to interpret that: The big numbers (TechCrunch says 240,000 sold to date, Mahaney thinks 378,000 by the end of this year) could be in the ball park, but Amazon wants to keep expectations low; or they could wildly off-base. Or somewhere in between.

New models of Kindle are confirmed as forthcoming. One marketed directly at those textbook-lugging college types.

There’s something about that news that troubles me. Bezos is devious. I have that cliched Star Wars Bad Feeling about this. Could they be doing colors?! And will one of them be red?!!?

Previously here:

Kindle, Schmindle II
Kindle, Schmindle

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