Jason Jeffries
28 January 2011
The popularity of online shopping is growing at a breakneck pace, and items like clothing, accessories and even electronics are increasingly being sold over the internet. But there is one online commodity that has already surpassed its real-life counterpart: books.
Amazon recently announced that sales of its Kindle ebooks have surpassed sales of real paper books for the first time, following a surge in the fourth quarter of 2010.
Analysts had predicted that such an event would not occur until at least the second quarter of 2011, meaning that the ease and convenience of buying and reading books electronically is winning over even more customers at an even faster rate than expected.
"Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Amazon.com is one of the most popular sites in the world, ranking in the top three ecommerce sites in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.
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