After Andrew’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!!!” post on the Wall Street Journal’s overblown coverage of the Segway, I got curious on just how many of the devices have been sold.
My rough estimate: about 40,000.
Here’s how I got there:
The WSJ story points out that, when it issued a recall in September 2006, Segway Inc. reported it had sold 23,500 of the machines since they went on sale in 2002.
So 23,500 Segways divided by four years gives us roughly 6,000 machines per year.
It’s been a year and a half since the recall, which at the 6,000-per-year rate would mean an extra 9,000 Segway sales, for a total of about 32,500.
But if the sales rate really has jumped since 2006, then total sales are probably close to 40,000 or so.
Gee, that sounds like a huge number, right?
Well, assuming each of those 40,000 Segways sold for $5,000 a piece, you’re looking at total revenue of $200 million.
Divide that revenue number by the six years that Segways have been on the market, and you’re looking at average annual revenue of $33 million or so.
Now, $33 million (give or take a few million) isn’t nothing.
But the Segway’s most likely competitor, the bicycle industry, was a $6 billion business in the U.S. last year, even with a gradual decline in bike sales since 2000 (which was actually kind of surprising to me when I looked it up), as 18.2 million bikes were sold.
On that scale, sales of the Segway would have to increase tenfold (to about 100,000 Segways a year or so) just to be considered more than a rounding error.
So, um, yeah, I think it’s safe to say the WSJ probably should have dialed things back a notch or two.
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