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Kobo reports best Christmas season ever

Of course, they didn’t have a Christmas season last year, but that’s beside the point.

Earlier today I was snide about Hanvon’s announcement that they’d achieved 1 million users. Look at the following Kobo announcement and you’ll understand why.

From the press release:

Kobo, the only pure-play global eReading service built on an open platform, today revealed its Holiday 2010 momentum. This Christmas, readers around the world received new eReaders and iPads and other eReading devices under their tree. Over a million people connected to Kobo, and hundreds of thousands of devices were activated each day since Christmas Eve, fuelling the highest eBook download rate in the company’s history. People around the world chose Kobo this Christmas, with the popular easy-to-use Kobo Wireless eReader, dozens of compatible eReaders, top-rated applications for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and one of the largest catalogues in the world with over 2.2 million eBooks, newspapers and magazines.

“The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest”

“Earlier this month we predicted that Christmas would be a record breaker for Kobo, and we have exceeded our expectations driving several ebook downloads per second since Christmas Eve, or an equivalent number hardcover books stacked as high as 50 Empire State Buildings,” said Michael Serbinis, CEO of Kobo. “I would like to thank our customers for choosing Kobo to start building their digital library this Christmas. Our success this holiday season is a pre-cursor to a New Year with people reading more than ever thanks to eBooks and Kobo.”

Kobo’s holiday growth also included:

  • Total registered users nearly doubling from the six weeks prior
  • A 50X increase in purchases from previous Holiday weekend last year
  • A 5X increase in purchases from the previous biggest weekend (also in December)
  • Customer purchases from over 130 countries, with some of the biggest gains outside of US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, occurring in Germany, Netherlands, and Singapore
  • A significant increase in device mix, with eReaders and Tablets accounting for the largest percent in sales

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Comments


shasan December 27, 2010 um 4:10 pm

Kobo was around last xmas season, the Kobo brand launched officially on Dec 15. Also, before that they were selling books as Shortcovers, so it’s a reasonable comparison I think.

Mike Cane December 28, 2010 um 10:41 am

No, not really. Shortcovers was solely owned by Indigo/Chapters, I think. Kobo is a new entity with several international owners, one of which is Borders in the U.S..


Zigwalski December 29, 2010 um 7:10 pm

Kobo promoted the hell out of this Christmas. They were the only ones giving me discounts through all Christmas. I bought several books when they had deep discounts.


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