07 January 2010
Lies, damned lies and statistics
On Christmas Day, says Amazon, it sold more e-books than it did printed versions.
No surprise really. When people woke up on Christmas Day and unwrapped their brand new Kindle e-reader, what else would they do than order up a couple of books to populate it?
Amazon gives some other statistics regarding Christmas sales, derived only from Amazon.com. For example, if all the computers customers purchased over Christmas were stacked one on top of the other, they would be more than twice as high as Mount Everest; if you put all the Blu-ray disc players purchased via Amazon.com side by side, they would stretch for more than 27 miles; and enough 8Gbyte iPod touch MP3 players were sold to provide continuous music for 442 years.
So, if you got a Kindle or an 8Gbyte Apple iPod touch or a Garmin nuvi 260W GPS, you're not alone – they were Amazon's most popular Christmas orders.
What all this shows is that consumer demand for electronics products hasn't diminished, which should be good news for the electronics industry in general.
Here's another statistic, courtesy of Vic Reeves. "82.2% of statistics are made up on the spot."
Author
Graham Pitcher
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.amazon.com
Companies
Amazon.com International Sales Inc
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