Amazon Kindle out of stock for Christmas

According to a recent article, Amazon may have underestimated the demand for the Kindle this holiday season because the device is now sold out through Christmas. As noted in a previous posting, search traffic for the Kindle soared to 479% when Oprah endorsed the Kindle on her October 24th show. The Amazon Kindle webpage explains that new purchases are “Expected to ship in 11 to 13 weeks.” So did Oprah’s praise really drive sales much higher than Amazon anticipated? An interesting article from Motley Fool speculates that Amazon may have actually intended for the sell-out and delay on new shipments because their next generation Kindle is due to hit the market in the first quarter of 2009 or in about the same time frame as the expected ship date of "11 to 13 weeks." This could mean that Amazon is trying out Apple’s tactic of decreasing shipments in anticipation for the next release. However, whether or not the sell-out was planned, Amazon is sure to miss out on some holiday revenue. The article notes, “The company's timing is terrible, of course. It should have hit the market with these puppies in October, when Bezos was on Winfrey's show. Instead, it lets rival Sony’s Reader, and smaller niche players, carve up market share over the holidays. Amazon got the market pumped about e-books last month, and now it's the one company that isn't delivering the goods. Ouch.”