The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Amazon profits dip

Margin pressure

Free whitepaper – PowerEdge energy Smart brochure

Bookseller Amazon.com saw profits fall in the third quarter despite increasing sales.

The company made sales of $2.31bn in the third quarter ended 30 September 2006 - up 24 per cent on the same period last year. But net income was down to $19m compared with $30m in the third quarter of 2005.

US sales were up 21 per cent to $1.26bn with China, France, Germany, Japan and the UK bringing in $1.05bn - up 29 per cent on the same period last year.

Worldwide sales of electronic and general goods rose 43 per cent to $699m or 30 per cent of worldwide net sales.

Amazon Prime, the company's loyalty scheme which gets you free shipping in exchange for a fixed annual fee, also showed good sequential growth.

The company made strong predictions for the crucial Christmas season - it expects net sales between $3.625bn and $3.950bn and to bring in operating income of between $145m and $235m.

More from Amazon here. ®

Free whitepaper – Optimizing the data center for cost and efficiency

Don’t Miss

DustbinDirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide

Ventblockers Horror beyond human imagination

SC09Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores

SC09 Jaguar munches Roadrunner

Ubuntu teaser Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

Smooth Windows upgrade it ain't

Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter

Narrowcasting for the email classes