The Kindle may face stiff competition from the newly released Apple iPad, but the king of the e-reader market will not go down without a fight. New positive figures released by Amazon prove that the battle of the e-readers is far from over.
Seattle-based Amazon said Thursday that strong holiday sales sent net profit soaring 71 percent during the fourth quarter of the year to 384 million dollars while sales rose 42 percent to 9.52 billion dollars, according to AFP information on Yahoo News.

Earnings per share were also much better than expected by Wall Street analysts. Overall, net profit rose by 40 percent to 24.51 billion dollars, Amazon said in a statement.

Amazon does not tend to release sales figures for its e-reader, but as the only item that was singled out in a statement from the company, it seems likely that the Kindle has been fuelling Amazon's gains. In fact, back in October, the company said the device was the company's "number one best-selling item by both unit sales and dollars" across all product categories.

Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, said in a statement that "millions of people now own Kindles, and Kindle owners read, a lot. When we have both editions, we sell six Kindle books for every 10 physical books."

Amazon said the US Kindle store had increased its number of books to 410,000 including 100 of the 112 New York Times bestsellers.

It is expected that e-reader sales will double to six million units this year, with some speculation as to whether tablets like Apple's iPad could potentially consume the whole e-reader market. Forrester Research estimates the Kindle has a nearly 60 percent share of the US market followed by the Sony Reader. These numbers were released before Apple's announcement, which some expect might eat away the Kindle's sales with its iBooks application, its sleek design, and its vibrant, colorful touchscreen.

Some analysts believe fence sitters will gravitate towards the multi-functional iPad, with some adding that Apple's tablet's cool factor "was a slap in the face to the Kindle", Reuters reports.

Another analyst from Broadpoint AmTech, Benjamin Schachter, said in an interview with Reuters that the iPad "certainly makes the Kindle look dated about 100 years in one fell swoop."

Although the most basic Kindle starts at a reasonable $259, Amazon's deluxe e-reader, the Kindle DX at a pricey $489, competes directly with the cheapest iPad at $499.

Over 1,400 periodicals and newspapers are available on the Kindle; however, newspapers do not benefit as much as they could for they only receive 30% of the revenue from the subscriptions. The iPad's arrival has offered hope for a new revenue-sharing agreement between newspaper publishers and e-reader makers.