14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the state of the economy Amazon is doing great bringing in record revenue. Another area where Amazon is flying high is e-books, which are quickly entering the mainstream thanks to the very successful Kindle. This holiday season, the Kindle was one of the most popular gifts in the US, and certainly the most popular on Amazon, by the company's own accounts. Now Amazon is releasing an interesting statistic claiming that, on Christmas day, it sold more electronic books through the Kindle store than it did physical books.
"Kindle has become the most gifted item in Amazon's history. On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books," the company said in a statement.
"We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history," Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com said. "On behalf of Amazon.com employees around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and happy reading!"
This may sound like a great breakthrough, and it certainly is from a certain perspective, but the sales came under some very special circumstances. First of all the sales counted were only on Christmas day, when a lot of people got a Kindle as a gift. It's pretty obvious that the first thing anyone would do when getting a Kindle is to buy at least a couple of books to test the devices.
At the same time, real book sales on Christmas are likely seeing one of the lowest points all year round. Putting these two things together, the record sales aren't that much of a surprise. Still, it bodes very well for the burgeoning e-book industry and for Amazon itself.
Surprisingly though, the record number of Kindles and e-books sold don't actually mean that much profit for Amazon, it may even be the other way around. At the moment, the company is actually losing out on new titles as the current prices are very close or even below the license fees it pays publishers. The strategy though is to make the device a clear market leader, a la iPhone, something that seems to be working out so far.