The Amazon Kindle Fire
Amazon is increasing capacity and is building millions more Kindle e-readers than planned, CEO Jeff Bezos said as the company announced a 44pc increase in third-quarter sales, yielding revenues of US$10.1bn.
“September 28th was the biggest order day ever for Kindle, even bigger than previous holiday peak days – we introduced Kindle Fire for US$199, Kindle Touch 3G for US$149, Kindle Touch for US$99, and our all-new Kindle for only US$79,” said Bezos.
“In the three weeks since launch, orders for electronic ink Kindles are double the previous launch. And based on what we’re seeing with Kindle Fire pre-orders, we’re increasing capacity and building millions more than we’d already planned.”
Net sales increased 44pc to US$10.88bn in the third quarter, compared with US$7.56bn in third quarter 2010. Net income decreased 73pc to US$63m in the third quarter.
The new ‘Silk’ road
During the third quarter, Amazon announced the US$199 Kindle Fire Android tablet computer. The company describes the Fire as a new class of Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games and web browsing, with all the content, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync, vibrant colour touchscreen and a powerful dual-core processor. The device also includes ‘Amazon Silk’, Amazon’s new web browser that accelerates the computing power of the mobile device by using the Amazon Web Services Cloud.
The e-commerce giant also announced licensing agreements with 20th Century Fox and PBS that allow the millions of Amazon Prime members to instantly stream a broad selection of popular movies and TV shows from their vast libraries. These deals will bring the total number of Prime instant videos to more than 12,000 movies and TV shows from partners such as CBS, FOX, PBS, NBC Universal, Sony, Warner Bros, and many more.
