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Amazon.com expressed its thanks to its customers on Dec. 26, saying that they’d made its Kindle e-reader the most gifted item in the online retailers’ history.
Additionally, Amazon announced that on Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more e-books than physical books.
“We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history,” said Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, in a statement. “On behalf of Amazon.com employees around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and happy reading!”
As it did when it announced its best sales month ever, Amazon demurred from stating exactly how many Kindles it sold. Analysts, however, have estimated that Amazon’s Kindle sales will total over half a million units by 2009’s close. Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Collins Stewart, anticipates that Amazon will see approximately $301.4 million in Kindle revenue in 2009, with that figure climbing to $1.8 billion in 2012.
Amazon did offer, however, that on its best day ever, customers worldwide ordered 9.5 million items – or 110 items per second. It shipped to 178 countries, and on its peak day during the holiday season, it shipped more than 7 million items.
Other holiday best sellers were the Apple iPod touch 8GB, the Garmin nuvi 260W 4.3-inch mobile GPS unit, the unlocked Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone, the Plantronics 510 Bluetooth headset and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone on the AT&T network.
It also sold a heckuva lot of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 software suites, Baby Einstein Takealong Tunes, Omron digital pocket pedometers and “Going Rogue” books by Sarah Palin.
Were all of the computers it sold this holiday season to be stacked on top of each other, they would be more than twice as high as Mt. Everest, Amazon announced.
Its competitors likely can’t say the same. Barnes & Noble was having a difficult time meeting orders for its new Nook e-reader, and reportedly told customers that it would give $100 online B&N gift certificates to anyone who ordered a Nook for a Dec. 24 arrival but didn’t receive it on time.
The bookseller blamed “higher-than-anticipated demand.”
Amazon offers more than 390,000 Kindle books, and among its sellers this holiday season were Dan Brown’s “Lost Symbol,” Tom Pawlik’s “Vanish” and “Snowbound” by Janice Kay Johnson.