I noticed that Amazon has started showing an estimate of how many units they’ve sold in the past month for some products, and I was looking at the list of Kobo ereaders on Amazon and thought the results were pretty interesting.
Kobo doesn’t reveal any kind of sales figures and they obviously don’t say which models are the most and least popular, but going off the sales numbers at Amazon can give a general idea.
I’ve always thought the Kobo Libra 2 was the best Kobo, and the sales numbers seem to back that up as the Libra 2 shows over 1000 units sold in the past month on Amazon.
The Kobo Clara 2E has the same 1k+ sales figure for the past month so those two models are clearly the most popular, but there’s a big drop-off after that.
The Kobo Nia is next on the list with just 100+ sold in the past month. The Nia is Kobo’s least expensive model, and it’s also the most outdated and the lowest-spec unit. The Clara 2E is a much better device, and it only costs $30 more, but it’s still kind of surprising to see they’re selling 10 times more Claras than Nias.
The Kobo Sage is also listed at 100+ units sold in the past month. Frankly, that’s not very many units sold for what’s supposed to be Kobo’s nicest model. I guess people don’t like the higher price and would rather spend $80 less on the Libra 2 with a similar design and all the same features minus notetaking support.
The least popular Kobo model on Amazon is the 10.3-inch Kobo Elipsa 2E. It only has 50+ sales in the past month. That’s surprisingly low, especially on website with the reach of Amazon. Apparently not very many people are interested in Kobo’s eNotes. That’s really not surprising given the fact you can get a Kindle Scribe for much less, or a much more advanced Onyx Note Air 3 for the same price.
Obviously Amazon’s sales numbers aren’t official and they don’t show how many units Kobo is selling directly from their website, but I bet they give a pretty good indication of how popular each model is compared to the others.
Given that, I would guess that Kobo is going to release a new basic model and a follow-up to the Libra 2 in 2024, as FCC paperwork shows they have two new models in the works. I doubt there will be a Sage 2, just like they never released a second gen Kobo Aura One or a Kobo Forma 2.
The description of the Clara 2E says it has 3 hours of battery life?
I’m not at all familiar with Kobo, besides the name. I don’t know anyone who has one. I know I don’t want any device with the one-side wider bezel. And. I prefer swipe page turns based on habit…
Should I decide to buy a Kobo, I’ll have to start from scratch – research borrowing library books and checking on putting my kindle books on the device.
Yeah – I’ve used a Nook and Kindle. Ignorant on Kobo. That 3 hour battery life has to be wrong!
It is incorrect. I’ve had one for a couple of years, and the battery holds up well, a couple of weeks if you don’t leave Wi-fi on.
Hopefully they’ll correct it. I never leave wifi on anything except my phone.
But unless I can easily check out all available library e-books as well as kindle books, I’m not interested. And, when I check out library books the option is kindle or annoyingly in a browser (meaning a tablet with eye-stress screen.) – not kobo.
Ditto… I’m not sure I’d want to start from scratch if I were to deviate from the Kindle. Although I guess I do have a big Calibre library. I guess if Amazon quits the Kindle realm, we’d have to. Well, not until I’ve read all of my Kindle books on whatever Kindle device (or device that can use the Kindle app) I have. My gosh, this spiked the anxiety a little. (I need to have a talk with myself.) 😀
It’s interesting that these stats are also available for Kindles. Here’s the monthly sales, starting from top:
* KIndle — 10K+.
* KIndle Paperwhite — 10K+.
* Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition — 10K+.
* Kindle Scribe — 5K+.
* Kindle Paperwhite Kids — 5K+.
* Kindle Oasis — 4K+.
* Kindle Kids — 300+.
I saw that too and was going to do a post analyzing the numbers later in the week. The Scribe is the most surprising one; they’re actually selling way more than I thought. The numbers are different for each storage capacity: 8k+ for 64GB, 6k+ for 32GB, 5k+ for 16GB with basic pen and 3k+ for the one with the premium pen. I can’t believe how many people are buying the 64GB version. I bet they could sell a Kindle Paperwhite with 128GB of storage for $300 and people would buy it.
I might be paranoid, but I wouldn’t trust these number completely. These numbers might be fake to make people buy these devices more (look, if 5000 people bought it, it must be good; if most people are buying the biggest storage, you might need it too)… I work in marketing and I know how well things like that work. Lot of online stores in my country use similar methods. And it’s Amazon, who is well known for using ethically questionable business practices…
I love my Libra 2, but the 7” screen seems small. And the larger Kobo Forma doesn’t suit me because of the glass over the screen. I hope they make a reader like Libra, without additional glass, but with an 8”+ screen and with Carta 1300. This would be the ideal e-reader for me.
I would buy Sage over Libra 2 because of the screen size, but the infamous small battery kept me from buying one. And from what I read online, most people decided similarly. If Kobo introduced new Sage with bigger battery, I believe the sales numbers would be different.
I own Kob’o’s almost exclusively – I love their devices. The battery life is far better than I ever got on the 2nd gen kindle oasis. Yes, borrowing library books is very easy – and much better than the kindle versions used to be. You just have to have an Adobe digital editions login that you tie to your library account.
I currently own and use the old Forma (that used to be my go to – the battery life was great!!). I have the Elipsa 2 – I really love this device and now it is my go to because of the screen size.i also have the Sage – and that one is garbage. Even with the battery cover (which makes it weight quite a bit) the battery life is terrible. If there was a good place for resale I would get rid of it.
So I love Kobos – I have given up on Kindles because of their closed platform. And now any new books are not able come on thru Calibre – so now I even buy new ebooks from Kobo – since for the most part their prices are similar to Kindle. So to me kindles are irrelevant – and I have not missed them over the past year at all.