Shipments of electronic readers such as Amazon.com’s popular Kindle series are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 78.2 percent over the next five years to 2013, a Taipei-based research house forecast yesterday.
Shipments of electronic readers may grow to 3.05 million units this year and to 19.76 million units by 2013, Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC, 資策會產業情報研究所) projected.
Many Taiwanese companies are diversifying into the electronic reader supply chain to cash in on the growing popularity of the devices. Local firms include electronic display supplier AU Optronics Corp (友達) and electronic reader assemblers Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) and Qisda Corp (佳世達), MIC said.
“We believe the popularity of electronic readers will spread next year from the US to more markets, including Europe and China. There will be explosive growth next year,” MIC analyst David Chen (陳賜賢) told reporters on the sidelines of a forum held to discuss the popular reading devices.
Next year, shipments would be more than double to 7.69 million units from this year as more and more books and contents are digitized for users to download to electronic readers for them to read on the move, MIC’s forecast showed.
“We believe demand will mostly come from students and office workers. They are required to read a lot of information because of their occupation,” Chen said.
By revenues, the compound annual growth rate would be about 72 percent. By 2013, revenues of electronic readers may rise to US$4.16 billion, compared with US$277 million last year, Chen said.
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