Spare a thought for the humble hardback this Christmas. It seems the traditional giftwrapped tome is being trumped by downloads. Amazon customers bought more e-books than printed books for the first time on Christmas Day.
As people rushed to fill their freshly unwrapped e-readers — one of the top-selling gadgets this festive season — the online retailer said sales at its electronic book store quickly overtook orders for physical books. Its own e-reader, the Kindle, is now the most popular gift in Amazon’s history.
Amazon’s shares rose sharply on Monday after it updated investors on a strong Christmas performance. On its peak day, Dec. 14, the retailer said customers ordered more than 9.5 million items worldwide, the equivalent of a record-breaking 110 items a second.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Seattle-based company’s top sellers in its home market included Apple’s iPod touch, Scrabble Slam Cards, Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus with balance board, the latest Harry Potter DVD, former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin’s book Going Rogue and Susan Boyle’s album, I Dreamed a Dream.
Although Amazon has repeatedly trumpeted “record-breaking” Kindle sales, it has refused to say exactly how many have been sold since the 2007 launch.
Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Collins Stewart in New York who has tracked the Kindle’s performance, believes that across both models — the paperback-sized Kindle 2 and larger DX — Amazon may be on target to have sold a little over 500,000 units by the end of the year.
Nor does the company divulge data about the Kindle-compatible books it sells from a Kindle Store that now includes more than 390,000 titles.
After first taking off in the US, e-readers are becoming increasingly popular in the UK and the Kindle went on sale in Britain in mid-October.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
UNWAVERING: Paraguay remains steadfast in its support of Taiwan, but is facing growing pressure at home and abroad to switch recognition to Beijing, Pena said Paraguayan President Santiago Pena has pledged to continue enhancing cooperation with Taiwan, as he and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed opposition to any unilateral change to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait using force, Japanese media reported on Saturday. Kishida yesterday completed a trip to France, Brazil and Paraguay, his first visit to South America since taking office in 2021. After the Japanese leader and Pena spoke for more than an hour on Friday, exchanging views on the situation in East Asia in the face of China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan, they affirmed that “unilateral attempts to change the