Amazon's Kindle 'flying off shelves'

November has proven to be the best sales month ever for Kindle in the U.S., helping to send Amazon.com Inc. shares to an all-time high Monday.

"It's flying off the shelves faster than any other product Amazon sells," Ian Freed, vice-president of the online merchandiser's Kindle division, said in a news release Monday.

"We’re seeing lots of people buying from one to a handful of Kindles as gifts for friends or family, as well as many businesses and other organizations buying Kindles in large quantities for their employees or customers," Freed said.

Shares of Amazon.com Inc. hit a record $135.25 US in intraday trading on Nasdaq.

Amazon does not provide precise data on Kindle sales.

Its Kindle is a portable e-reader that can store about 1,500 books in its two gigabytes of memory.

Users can wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a high-resolution 15-cm electronic display, using the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones. Several versions, including one with a magazine-sized screen, are available in the United States.

Tardy Canadian rollout

Kindle's launch has been slower and somewhat more controversial in Canada because the e-reader's web browser and blog subscription service will not work here, but customers will have free access to Wikipedia.

Only the 15-cm display version is sold here and it's not yet known which company will supply the device's cellular connectivity in Canada.

Amazon's product currently dominates the e-reader market, taking 60 per cent of the U.S. marketshare, according to a Forrester Research report.

Sony's Reader has 35 per cent marketshare. It is available in Canada, as is its smaller Reader Pocket Edition and its larger touch-screen version. None of them can connect wirelessly, although Sony announced that it would begin selling the Reader Daily Edition in the U.S. in December.