Amazon's Kindle Tablet is blamed for this expected turn of events

Mar 9, 2012 07:46 GMT  ·  By

It isn't often that sales of a product type plummet like a chopped down tree, but e-reader may just go through something of the sort, according to a new report.

Digitimes predicts a major drop in global e-reader sales for the current quarter (Q1, 2012), and the reason is not what one would first expect.

Rather than blaming it on the downward trend usually associated with the post-holiday quarter, the report holds Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet responsible.

Then again, if it were just the regular drop after the holiday season, it would not be as massive as this.

After 9 million e-readers were sold around the world in Q4, 2011 (October-December), only 2 million are set to ship during January-March 2012.

That's a 78% decline and, Digitimes says, Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet is to blame because of its price and functionality.

The item ships for $199, which is below what e-readers themselves used to sell a while ago.

The sum is equivalent to about 150 Euro, based on exchange rates, but 200 Euro would probably be the actual price if it were available on the old continent (the product doesn't ship in Europe, even though cases and other accessories do, strangely enough).

In other words, with such a cheap slate to choose, many people will get it instead of an e-reader rather than alongside one.

Amazon has already cut back on e-reader orders from upstream suppliers, the report says, and we wouldn't be surprised to hear it happened again.

Fortunately for makers of electronic book readers in general, this drop is not indicative of the mid and long terms.

Researchers and analysts still fully expect shipments to grow annually, though perhaps not as fast as in 2011 (107% boost). By 2015, the 60 million threshold should be surpassed, though no one can say for sure what the future will bring.