<div><p>On Christmas Day customers bought more electronic books than hard-copy books on Internet retail giant Amazon.com, the company said in a statement Saturday.</p><p>Amazon also said that its e-book reader, the Kindle, "has become the most gifted item in Amazon's history."</p><p>"On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books," Amazon said.</p><p>Amazon e-books can also be read on Apple iPhone or iPod Touch devices. The Kindle online store boasts a library of 390,000 digitized books for sale.</p><p>While Amazon has not released figures for Kindle sales, Forrester Research estimated in October that the Kindle has a nearly 60 percent share of the US market, followed by the Sony Reader with 35 percent.</p><p>The Kindle also faces competition from the "Nook," a new device sold by US bookstore giant Barnes & Noble. The company said it sold all of its Nooks one month before Christmas, and that the next shipment will not be available until early January.</p><p>Forrester estimated that three million e-readers will be sold in the United States this year, up from a previous forecast of two million units, and forecast that e-reader sales will double to six million units next year.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=66011094&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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