Without disclosing actual sales fgures Amazon.com has reported record-breaking Kindle sales over the 2010 holiday-season.

The third-generation Kindle is officially the best-selling product in company history and on Christmas day more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any previous day.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO commented

"We're seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet"

referring to devices such as the Apple iPad.

"Customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies and web browsing, and their Kindles for reading sessions...Kindle's $139 price point is a key factor -- it's low enough that people don't have to choose."

You could also add to this "own both" phenonmenon that the two are physically better suited to their particular tasks. There is nothing quite like a color display for movies and even reading magazines but the battery life, weight and display quality aren't really suited to reading a novel. The Kindle on the other hand is small, light, runs for days on a charge and has a display that is just write for rendering black-on-white books.  Add to this the fact that you are probably more willing to be casual about your use of a $139 Kindle then reading it in public places is a more relaxed proposition. Users have even been seen to leave them on their train seat while visiting the refeshment car. It is arguable that an ebook reader has, above all else, to be cheap.

The observation that consumers are choosing a mix of electronc devices is borne out by the fact that the top three electronics products based on untis ordered in the period November 14 through December 19 were Kindle (Wi-Fi); Kindle 3G abd Apple iPod touch 8GB - which given that only Amazon sells Kindle but Apple and other outlets sell the iPod mean that Apple still dominates in the overall mobile device market.  

Related articles:

Kindle price crash!

Why Kindle is the answer

A Kindle diary

Pricing ebooks

A book's worth...

<ASIN:B002Y27P3M@COM>

<ASIN:B002FQJT3Q@COM>

<ASIN:B002GYWHSQ@COM>

<ASIN:B002Y27P46@UK>

<ASIN:B002LVUWFE@UK>