Monday, February 21, 2011

Latest forecast predicts U.S. e-book sales will reach nearly $2.7 billion in three years

The catchphrase "There's an app for that" may soon be replaced by "There's an e-book for that." In a new report, "2011 E-Book Forecast: Get Set for the Next Best-Seller," Yankee Group predicts U.S. e-book downloads will grow at an 83% CAGR by 2013, while paid mobile app downloads will grow at a 72% CAGR during the same period. U.S. e-book sales will grow from $313 million in 2009 to $2.7 billion by 2013.

The report also finds:

E-book unit sales will skyrocket. By 2013, U.S. consumers will purchase 381 million e-books, roughly four times the amount they purchased in 2010.

Average selling prices of e-books will plummet. By 2013, the average e-book retail price will fall to $7, down from an average of more than $9 in 2009.

Age is a factor in e-book adoption. While a third of 18-19 year olds express high interest, key features like scalable fonts, text-to-speech conversion and lightweight e-readers have attracted more than 22 percent of the 65 and over crowd.

Students will have a big hand in stirring e-book sales. Textbooks are heavy, expensive and unwieldy. It's no surprise then that 1 in 4 students express strong interest in e-books.

"E-book prices are falling, unit sales are growing and revenue is skyrocketing--you may ask why this didn't happen 10 years ago," said Dmitriy Molchanov, analyst at Yankee Group and author of the report. "Aside from the growing adoption of e-readers like Amazon's Kindle, new content formats, better content discovery tools and new business models will all drive e-book sales in the next three years. The ecosystem is maturing fast--device makers and others who don't make their move now will miss out on a multi-billion-dollar market."

No comments: