Kindle Top Selling Amazon.com Product Ever

If you happen to own a Kindle e-reader, you're in good company. Amazon.com says the third-generation Kindle is now the bestselling product in the company's history, eclipsing "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh book in the series.

The Kindle was introduced in 2007, developed by an Amazon subsidiary. The portable e-reader is a combination of software, hardware and a networking platform that utilizes wireless connectivity. Users are able to purchase, download, browse and read e-books, newspapers, blogs and other digital media.

Harry in the dust

"We're grateful to the millions of customers who have made the all-new Kindle the bestselling product in the history of Amazon, surpassing Harry Potter 7," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. "We're seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet."

Amazon said customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies, and web browsing and their Kindles for reading sessions. They report preferring Kindle for reading because it weighs less, eliminates battery anxiety with its month-long battery life, and has the advanced paper-like Pearl e-ink display that reduces eye-strain, doesn't interfere with sleep patterns at bedtime, and works outside in direct sunlight -- an important consideration especially for vacation reading.

The company said Kindle's $139 price point is also a key factor. It's one reason, it said, that on Christmas Day, more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history.

Boffo sales

Kindle sales were just part of what Amazon is calling a very successful holiday shopping season. The company said that on its peak day, Nov. 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which amounted to a record-breaking 158 items per second.

This season Amazon said it shipped items to 178 countries, with the most remote shipments containing the "Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue," "Toy Story" DVDs, "Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul," NHL 11, Halo Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops, delivered to the hamlet of Grise Fiord, north of the Arctic Circle in Canada.