• Amazon et al., Monday, December 27, 2010 1:27 PM

Sorry Harry Potter, the third-generation Kindle has overtaken the final installment of your book series to become the most successful product in Amazon history, so the entail giant reported on Monday morning. The newest Kindle had been available just three months when it passed J.K. Rowling's wizard wunderkind, proving once and for all that gadget hounds have a greater need for instant satisfaction than do 12 year olds.

As GigaOm points out, Amazon Kindle CEO Jeff Bezos said in the release, "We're seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet," implying that early adopters have not chosen between the devices but want a specialized device for games, movies and Web browsing and another for reading. GigOm attributes the dual device households to Amazon's savvy move of equipping the devices with its Whispersynch, a cloud-based system that keeps libraries (and your place in a book) in synch across multiple devices. Digital Trends snipes that Bezos does not mention were the data about "seeing" the multiple device purchases comes from, but suggests "perhaps via some unspecified all-seeing, all-knowing, super-powered eye."

The top two electronics devices on Amazon's holiday shopping bestseller list (between November 14 and December 19) were the Kindle 3g and WiFi-only versions, crowning Kindle the in-house king of the season in addition to all time. Trailing behind in third is Apple's 8GB iPod Touch.

Out of the recap from Amazon, The Washington Post's Faster Forward blog highlights the site's biggest shopping day for all products, Nov. 29, when "consumers ... ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide -- a mind-blowing 158 items per second." And it also pulls out some of Amazon's more arcane data on mobile shopping habits: "Sunday was the biggest mobile shopping days for iPad, iPhone and Android users, but it was Friday for BlackBerry users."

Electronista notes that while the latest generation Kindle's sales sound impressive (though still no numbers), outside of Amazonia the Kindle (in general, not just the latest version) does not rue the roost. The Kindle "should ship eight million Kindles this year, most of which are moving in the past few months, but will have been outsold by the iPad despite Apple's hardware having a fewer eight months on the market."

Christmas Day also saw the most Kindle activations and eBook downloads for a single day yet (as well as the most downloads on competing platforms -- perhaps this was the optimistic "seeing" Bezos inferred from). If you are interested the most downloaded ebook on Christmas Day was the techie thriller "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson.

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