Amazon boasts first $10 billion quarter

Amazon's quarterly sales topped $10 billion for the first time in the fourth quarter of last year.

For the quarter ending December 31, the mega-etailer pulled in net sales of $12.95 billion, up from $9.5 billion in Q3. That's a 37 per cent increase from the previous year, and it translated to profits of $416 million, an 8 per cent jump.

In a prepared statement, CEO Jeff Bezos also announced that Kindle ebooks have now surpassed paperbacks as the most popular book format on Amazon.com. Previously, the company has announced that ebooks had surpassed hardcovers in popularity, and that they would leapfrog paperbacks in the second quarter of this year. So Bezos patted his own company on the back for being ahead of schedule.

For the entire year, net sales increased 40 per cent to $34.20 billion, and profits rose 28 per cent to $1.15 billion. But Amazon didn't quite meet the expectations of the Wall Street guessmen. The company's stock price dropped over 9 per cent in after-hours trading. ®