Amazon has announced that Kindle e-book downloads sales in the US outstripped paperback sales in the last quarter of 2010.
The trend continued in January 2011 with 15 more e-books being sold for every 100 paperbacks, said the company.
The Kindle, which is Amazon’s e-reader device, now accounts for 41.5% of the e-reader market.
Amazon chief executive officer and chairman Jeff Bezos said the milestone had come sooner than expected. He stressed that it had come on top of continued growth in paperback sales.
Bezos said, "Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year."
Amazon has not specified how many of its Kindle downloads it has sold. However, it has disclosed that they had overtaken the final book in the Harry Potter series to become the top-selling item in the e-commerce company’s history.
