03 Jan 2012 03:27:21
Amazon historically has been loathe to release specific sales data for its hardware, so this was a minor step forward as the company released figures -- albeit imprecise ones.
It also announced that three Kindle products occupied the top three spots on its bestseller charts.
The newly released Kindle Fire tablet topped the list, while the Kindle Touch and regular old Kindle clocked in at numbers two and three respectively. The Fire has been the bestselling and "most gifted" product on Amazon since it debuted 13 weeks ago.
Kindle sales have also been strong overseas, leading the pack in England, Germany, France Spain and Italy during the holidays.
"We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle," Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com's founder and CEO said in a statement. "And in a huge milestone for independent publishing, we'd also like to congratulate Darcie Chan, the author of 'The Mill River Recluse,' and Chris Culver, the author of 'The Abbey,' for writing two of the bestselling Kindle books of the year."
There is no breakdown between the different Kindle products, so all of the figures remain vague. As MG Siegler of TechCrunch notes on his personal blog, Fire and Touch sales could range from 100,000 to 2 million (or even infinity).
Still, as Bezos noted, strong Kindle sales are good for Amazon in another way -- they boost book sales.
Gifting of Kindle books climbed 175 percent in the stretch between Black Friday and Christmas this year as opposed to 2012 with Christmas registering as the "biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads."
Even if the numbers are vague, the sales figures mean that the new devices are a success, if not on the level of the iPad).
