In its Saturday-released yearly post-Christmas statement on holiday sales, Amazon. com noted that its customers bought more books via the Kindle e-reader on the Christmas Day, as compared to the purchase of physical books - a milestone that the e-reader achieved for the first time ever since its launch.

In addition, the Kindle reportedly was also the 'most gifted' product in the company's history. Noting the landmark peaked by Kindle, Jeff Bezos - Amazon's founder and chief executive - said: "We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history. On behalf of Amazon. com employees around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and happy reading."

So far as Amazon's other notable achievements this holiday season are concerned, the online retailer's shopping figures reached their zenith on December 14 - with its customers having ordered over 9.5 million items round the globe, the company reported a "record-breaking" sales statistics of "110 items per second."

The holiday season saw Amazon ship its products to as many as 178 countries. As per the company, the "last minute" went to an Amazon Prime buyer in Seattle, for ordering a Kindle at
1:43pm on Christmas Eve and receiving it at 4:57pm the same evening!

Meanwhile, in terms of sales of electronics, the most popular items ordered on Amazon, other than the Kindle, were - the 8GB Apple iPod Touch; and the Garmin Nuvi 260W 4.3-inch GPS device.