Of the 2,800 respondents ChangeWave surveyed, 32 percent used the iPad as their e-reader and 47 percent the Kindle. That’s far less of a disparity between the two than we saw in the research outfit’s August survey, which found 62 percent of respondents using a Kindle and just 16 percent using an iPad. In other words, by this measure, between August and November, the iPad’s share of the U.S. e-reader market rose 16 percentage points and the Kindle’s fell 15 points. And that trend seems likely to continue in the months ahead. Of those respondents planning on buying an e-reader in the next 90 days, 42 percent said they’d like an iPad while only 33 percent said they’d opt for a Kindle.

Said ChangeWave’s director of research, Paul Carton, “The Amazon Kindle is hanging on to a rapidly diminishing lead over the Apple iPad among current e-reader owners….The iPad is likely to be the biggest beneficiary of the expanding e-reader market this holiday season.”

If that’s the case, Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang’s prediction in February that Amazon might see its e-book market share slip from 90 percent to 72 percent this year and to 35 percent by 2015 might not be so far off.

Kindle will debut at Target’s (TGT) flagship store in Minneapolis, as well as 102 locations in South Florida this Sunday, with wider availability to follow.

This is Amazon’s (AMZN) first foray into the brick-and-mortar retail world and one evidently made under duress. Last week, Barnes & Noble (BKS) began distributing its Nook e-book reader through Best Buy (BBY), and, of course, Apple (AAPL) is now selling the iPad at its own retail stores.

With claim to about 90 percent of e-book sales, according to estimates by Credit Suisse Group AG (CS), the e-book market is Amazon’s to lose. As Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang noted earlier this year, the retailer may well see its e-book market share slip from 90 percent to 72 percent in 2010, thanks to some formidable new rivals.

“Near term, we suspect that the iPad and the new eBook agency pricing model, which requires that Amazon increase retail prices to be more consistent with Apple’s pricing, will provide Kindle with the most market share headwind,” Wang wrote. “Going forward, we can envision a scenario where Apple, Amazon, and Google eventually split the market. Therefore, we expect Amazon’s share of eBooks business to fall from 90 percent currently to about 35 percent over the next five years.”

That’s a steep decline–though 35 percent does seem extreme. Little wonder, then, that Amazon is willing to give up its sales exclusivity for the device in an effort to temper the projected loss of market share.

According to Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang, the retailer will likely see its e-book market share slip from 90 percent to 72 percent this year and to 35 percent by 2015.

“Near term, we suspect that the iPad and the new eBook agency pricing model, which requires that Amazon increase retail prices to be more consistent with Apple’s pricing, will provide Kindle with the most market share headwind,” Wang wrote. “Going forward, we can envision a scenario where Apple, Amazon, and Google eventually split the market. Therefore, we expect Amazon’s share of eBooks business to fall from 90 percent currently to about 35 percent over the next five years.”

That’s a steep decline, but if Wang is right, it will be tempered a bit by a concomitant increase in sales as e-books become more mainstream. The analyst figures Amazon’s e-book sales will rise to $775 million from $248 million over the next five years.

That’s still not going to appease the folks at YouTube, who take umbrage at the assumptions analysts Spencer Wang and Kenneth Sena make when assessing the site’s financials.

But until the YouTube guys can provide the outside world with concrete numbers about their costs, sales, etc.–which they may never do–they’ll have to deal with a variety of guesses.

For what it’s worth, what’s changed here are the analysts’ guesstimates about YouTube’s bandwidth costs: They used to think the site was plowing through $360 million to deliver all those clips; now they think the number is $300 million. They’ve left all their other estimates unchanged.

Meanwhile, some perspective: Google’s YouTube adventure is still less than three years old. The “two kings,” as co-founder Chad Hurley put it in this video, only got together in October 2006.

[Image credit: greeblie]

Wang sees a 1-1.5 percent boost to paid clicks in the second quarter from the company’s new policy to allow third parties to use trademarked terms in the text portion of paid search ads. He also says that channel checks with search engine marketers and key advertisers find that search ad pricing appears to be stabilizing. He now sees revenue per click down 11.7 percent in the quarter, about in line with Q1, and better than his original estimate of down 16.2 percent.

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The Street is looking for revenue of $8.59 billion and profits of 22 cents a share.

Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang today picked up coverage of the cable and satellite sector, launching Comcast with an Outperform rating; he says that cable has a competitive advantage over the satellite companies over the medium term. “Approximately 70 percent of consumers indicate a preference for bundling, and cable is currently the only platform with the ability to offer the triple-play bundle on a side-scale basis,” he writes.

In a note this morning previewing tomorrow’s numbers, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett said he continues to view cable stocks as “far and away, the best defensives in our broader telecom, cable and satellite universe.” He says they not only offer strong defensive characteristics–”video and broadband are no more discretionary for most families than running water”–but also solid growth prospects even as we head into a recession.

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