A Wii in every third household by 2011, analyst predicts

An analyst with Merrill Lynch has predicted that by 2011 30% of US households will own a Wii, 33% for Japan, Next Generation reports.

The prediction comes in the aftermath of extraordinary results for Nintendo’s console, outselling all competitors in North America and Japan, and riding high in Europe prior to PS3's introduction there.

Yoshiyuki Kinoshita, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, made the prediction following news that Wii had captured a 68% share of the Japanese next-gen market last month, selling over 400,000 units against 150,000 units for PS3. In the U.S, Wii outsold PS3 by 436K to 244K, although, of course, PS3 is still out-billing Wii on a dollar basis.

EDIT I have done some thinking about this prediction - and it may turn out not so great, after all. The predicted sales would be very good, but they might not be excellent, depending on the performance of the other consoles.

There is a total of 100 million households in the States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. So the analyst means to say that Nintendo will sell around 30 million consoles in the US within the next five years. That would make for an average of six million consoles sold in the country each year, which equals to the success the Xbox360 has had so far.

To assess what the analyst really was thinking, it would be vital to know his opinion on the other two consoles and their respective sales estimates.

Source: Next Generation