Amazon Announces 1st Quarter Financials, Digital Products are Top Sellers
Posted on April 27, 2012
Amazon.com, Inc. announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2012. The company beat analysts' expectations, although net income decreased 35% to $130 million in the first quarter, or $0.28 per diluted share, compared with net income of $201 million, or $0.44 per diluted share, in first quarter 2011. The company has spent a great deal of money on new projects, such as its publishing arm and its Kindle e-readers. It expects these investments to result in increased profits in the future.
Net sales increased 34% to $13.18 billion in the first quarter, compared with $9.86 billion in first quarter 2011. Sales are being driven by the Kindle and ebooks. Nine out of ten of the top sellers on Amazon.com were digital products, such as the Kindle, Kindle books, movies, music and apps. Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement,
"I'm excited to announce that we now have more than 130,000 new, in-copyright books that are exclusive to the Kindle Store you wont find them anywhere else. They include many of our top bestsellers in fact, 16 of our top 100 bestselling titles are exclusive to our store.
Bezos enthused, "If you're an Amazon Prime member, you don't even need to buy these titles you can borrow them for free with no due dates from our revolutionary Kindle Owners' Lending Library. The Kindle Owners' Lending Library is heavily used by Kindle owners, and it has extremely unusual features that both authors and customers love. Every time you borrow a book, the author gets paid and we have an inexhaustible supply of each title so you never have to wait in a queue for the book you want. Kindle is the bestselling e-reader in the world by far, and I assure you we'll keep working hard so that the Kindle Store remains yet another reason to buy a Kindle!"