Amazon Increases 36 percent in Sale in Fourth Quarter
Net income rises 8% to $416 million...Amazon.com reported that its fourth quarter sales rose 36 percent to $12.95 billion and net income rose 8 percent to $416 million. The online retail giant does not list sales by departments, which would include jewelry, watches, clothing and other items.
The company launched "price check" for iPhone, a new price comparison application that provided shoppers a way to compare in-store prices with those listed on Amazon.com and other online merchants. Shoppers can use the app to scan a barcode, snap a picture, or say or type a product name to instantly see online prices for that item. In December, shoppers used the app more than two million times to check prices, according to Amazon.com.
Fourth quarter sales across North America rose 45 percent to $7.21 billion, and international segment sales, representing the U.K., Germany, Japan, France, Italy and China, rose 26 percent to $5.74 billion.
Amazon hosting services, reduced pricing on existing Premium Support offerings by half and also added two new support plans to meet the needs of developers and enterprises of all sizes and technical ability.
For the year 2010, Amazon.com recorded sales of $34.2 billion, an increase of 40 percent from 2009. Profits rose 28 percent to $1.15 billion or $2.58 per share.
Jeff Bezos, company founder, said, "Thanks to our customers, we achieved two big milestones. We had our first $10 billion quarter, and after selling millions of third-generation Kindles with the new Pearl e-ink display during the quarter, Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com."
"Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcover and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected - and it's on top of continued growth in paperback sales."
By: Jeff Miller
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