Amazon.com has announced financial results for the third quarter of its financial year.
Net sales were up 27% year-on-year to $13.81 billion (£8.57 billion), although the company made a $274 million net quarterly loss. A year ago it reported profit of $63 million for the quarter. Most of the loss was due to the company’s investment in the LivingSocial local discount business.
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, said “Our approach is to work hard to charge less. Sell devices near breakeven and you can pack a lot of sophisticated hardware into a very low price point. And our approach is working - the $199 Kindle Fire HD is the #1 bestselling product across Amazon worldwide. Incredibly, this is true even as measured by unit sales. The next two bestselling products worldwide are our Kindle Paperwhite and our $69 Kindle. We’re selling more of each of these devices than the #4 bestselling product, book three of the Fifty Shades of Grey series. And we haven’t even started shipping our best tablet - the $299 Kindle Fire HD 8.9” ships November 20.”