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Microsoft Sells Eight Million Kinects–Well, Not Really, but Close Enough

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 06:37:10 +0000

We were hoping Steve Ballmer would spill the beans on how many Kinects the company has sold to date, and he didn’t disappoint.

During the Microsoft chief’s traditional appearance on the eve of CES, there was really no better consumer electronic to talk about.

The Xbox add-on has been a blockbuster hit for the company.

It sold 2.5 million in the first 25 days at market, and has garnered extended interest in the platform beyond hard-core gaming enthusiasts. It works similarly to the Nintendo Wii by allowing gamers to play beach volleyball or ping-pong or take dance lessons using motion, but this version doesn’t require a controller at all.

Tonight, Ballmer provided an update on just how well it’s selling. In its first 60 days on the market, he said, eight million Kinect sensors were sold, outpacing the five million units the company had forecasted in 2010.

But those figures require a little more explanation than was given:

The 2.5 million sold in 25 days counted the number of devices consumers purchased, whereas the eight million figure reported today represents the number of devices shipped to retailers.

The discrepancy between those two is likely fairly slim. Up until recently, inventories have been really low, and retailers have been sold out in some circumstances. For instance, the Xbox 360 with 250GB, bundled with the Kinect, remains sold out at Walmart.com, but is available at Amazon.com.

A Microsoft spokesperson had a fairly simple explanation for the different reporting methods:

To develop the sell-through numbers when it announced 2.5 million in sales, Microsoft conducted manual checks among retailers to gauge interest during the holidays. Those are very labor intensive, “and are not something we do throughout the year,” the spokesman explained.

“The change back to sell-in reporting aligns our Kinect disclosures to our ongoing worldwide console and financial disclosures, and is what you should expect from us going forward.”

Either way, the spokesperson assures us that Kinect sales far surpassed the five-million unit forecast.

It doesn’t hurt that the Xbox 360 has been the best-selling console in North America for six months running. Another figure revealed tonight was that console sales for the Xbox 360 hit 50 million over the holiday season.

That’s a lot. Nintendo said this week that the Wii system to date has sold more than 34 million consoles in the U.S., and that it sold more than seven million in 2010.

Other milestones:

–8 million: Number of Kinects sold in first 60 days

–50 million: Xbox 360s sold to date

–30 million: Number of Xbox LIVE members

EBay Rang Up $2 Billion in Mobile Sales in 2010

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:43:44 +0000

EBay said today that global mobile sales more than tripled in 2010, generating nearly $2 billion in gross merchandise volume. (GMV is the total value of all successfully sold items on eBay, regardless of whether the buyer and seller finalized the deal.) While that’s good news for the retailer, which has seen overall revenue growth slow down, it is still a small sliver of the overall pie. In comparison, eBay reported total GMV of $44.9 billion in the first three months of 2010. In the U.S., eBay said mobile sales grew nearly 175 percent year-over-year, generating nearly $850 million in GMV in 2010.

China Delays Filtering Initiative

John Paczkowski — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:00:52 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Palm Sold 300,000 Pres in June

John Paczkowski — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:10:16 +0000

During its post-earnings conference call last Thursday, Palm refused to say how many Pre handsets have been sold to date. Or how many it believes it will sell in the first quarter of production. The company would say only, in the words of CEO Jon Rubinstein, that “sales have been strong and growing.” So until Palm (PALM) provides specific Pre sales figures, we have only the estimates of analysts with which to gauge the device’s impact on Palm’s moribund smartphone franchise.

And the latest estimates, from Edward Snyder at Charter Equity Research, suggest that the impact is great. Sources in the manufacturing and retail channels tell Snyder that Palm may have sold as many as 300,000 Pres in June and 70,000 in May.

Those are impressive figures if they prove true. After all, Palm shipped just 351,000 phones in the entire quarter prior to the Pre’s debut. If Palm ships one million Pres to Sprint (S) in the device’s first full quarter of production, as Snyder believes, that will be an achievement indeed.

As I’ve said before, turnaround story of the year.

iPhone 3GS–The S Is for "Shortage"

John Paczkowski — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:27:06 +0000

The iPhone 3GS has been on the market just 10 days now, and already a growing number of Apple (AAPL) stores around the country are running short of the device. It seems that demand for the 3GS, which topped one million units sold its first weekend at market, has exceeded even the company’s presumably aggressive targets.

At the time of this writing, Apple’s iPhone availability widget (pictured) is showing shortages of various iPhones at Apple stores across the United States. The device is completely sold out in states like Alabama, Delaware and Kentucky, where Apple (AAPL) has a limited retail presence. In others, its availability varies, though there seems to be higher demand for black phones than white.

An impressive performance, particularly at a time when consumers are inclined to be more frugal than usual.

iPhone 3GS–The S Is for "Shortage"

John Paczkowski — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:27:06 +0000

An impressive performance, particularly at a time when consumers are inclined to be more frugal than usual.