Screen Digest, a UK based analyst firm, predictes that Microsoft's Kinect will sell-through 7.6 million units by the end of 2011, but HULIQ's own analysis suggests this is a flawed prediction.
Predicting sales of anything more than a month out is always a highly speculative endeavor, but at least one analyst has come out with a prediction for sales of both Microsoft's Kinect peripheral and the Playstation Move by the end of 2011. According to Gamespot http://www.gamespot.com/news/6285819.html UK firm Screen Digest predicts that Redmond will sell 7.6 million units of its more expensive (but more revolutionary) device, while Sony will manage 7.3 million units. Based on the early evidence for both systems, the firm is largely correct about the Move but quite flawed when it comes to the Kinect.
On the Kinect side, Microsoft revealed at the end of November that it had sold 2.5 million units of the Kinect, putting it on pace to meet its sales guidance (and HULIQ's own prediction) of 5 million units by the end of the year. The official numbers will be available after the December NPD report is published, but HULIQ's own tracking data supports this. It is even likely that the Kinect will have sold a bit over 5 million.
More importantly, though we are just beginning to enter the post-Christmas shopping period, the Kinect appears to be maintaining a good deal of its earlier momentum. Considering that it is currently selling 2.5 million (give or take) per month, the Screen Digest prediction is quite conservative in HULIQ's estimation. It is natural that sales will decrease post-launch and outside of the Christmas season, but a rate of 500,000 units per month is more than reasonable, which would put the install base north of 10 million by the end of 2011.
The Playstation Move presents a more problematic analysis, as Sony has (to date) only been revealing shipments to retailers, not actual sell-through. The day after Microsoft made its announcement about the Kinect, Sony responded by saying that it had shipped 4.1 million Move units to retail. Despite requests for clarification, Sony has not revealed sell-through, but HULIQ estimates that sell-through for the Move at that point was somewhere in the 2-2.5 million unit territory.
Considering the Move's earlier release date, Sony was managing a much slower sales rate (about 1.5 million per month). Coupled with the fact that software sales for the Move have been abysmal, monthy sales of the Move in 2011 look to be considerably weaker than the Kinect unless something improves on the software side. As it stands now, an install base of around 4 million units is a reasonable estimation, and 250,000 units per month is a realistic prediction for 2011 sales. This would put the Move right around Screen Digest's 7.3 million unit prediction by the end of the year.
In other words, HULIQ agrees with Screen Digest when it comes to the Move, but their prediction concerning the Kinect is far too conservative.
http://www.huliq.com/10177/76-million-kinect-units-through-2011-flawed-prediction
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