• Kindle and Kindle DX are available for immediate shipment to over 100 countries. Additionally, the Kindle for iPhone App is now available from the Apple App Store in more than 60 countries. Customers around the world can now synchronize reading between their Kindle, Kindle DX, personal computer, iPhone, iPod touch and soon, Blackberry, Mac and iPad.

• The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 410,000 books, including 100 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, more than 8,000 blogs, and more than 130 top U.S. and International newspapers and magazines, including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times (U.K.), Le Monde, The Economist, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and Time.
• The Company announced that authors and publishers around the world can now use the self-service Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to upload and sell books in English, German and French to customers worldwide in the Kindle Store.
• Amazon.com announced a new 70 percent royalty option for Kindle DTP, enabling authors and publishers to earn more royalties. Beginning June 30, authors and publishers who select the new royalty option will receive 70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs.
• The Company introduced Kindle Development Kit, which gives developers access to programming interfaces, tools and documentation to build and upload active content for Kindle.
• North America segment sales, representing the Company’s U.S. and Canadian sites, were $4.96 billion, up 36% from fourth quarter 2008.
• International segment sales, representing the Company’s U.K., German, Japanese, French and Chinese sites, were $4.56 billion, up 49% from fourth quarter 2008. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, International sales grew 37%.
• Worldwide Media sales grew 29% to $4.68 billion. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 23%.
• Worldwide Electronics & Other General Merchandise sales grew 60% to $4.61 billion. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 54%.
• The Company completed its acquisition of Zappos.com on November 1, 2009. Zappos.com contributed approximately $200 million to fourth quarter revenue.
• Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), a new web service that makes it easy to set up, operate and scale relational databases in the cloud, was introduced by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon RDS provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-consuming database administration tasks, freeing users to focus on their application and their business.
• AWS introduced Spot Instances for Amazon EC2, a new option that allows customers to purchase and consume Amazon EC2 compute resources. With Spot Instances, customers bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run those instances for as long as their bid exceeds the current Spot Price. Spot Instances can enable lower costs and provide significant short-term capacity for customers with flexibility in when their applications can run.
• Both Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 lowered pricing during the quarter. Amazon EC2 lowered prices up to 15% for all On-demand instance families and sizes, while Amazon S3 introduced new pricing tiers that will reduce storage cost for multi-petabyte customers by more than 15%.

Separately, the Company is announcing that its Board of Directors has authorized the Company to repurchase up to $2 billion of the Company's common stock. The program allows the Company to opportunistically repurchase its shares from time to time when it believes that doing so would enhance long-term shareholder value. The repurchase authorization does not have a fixed expiration. Purchases may be effected through one or more open market transactions, privately negotiated transactions, transactions structured through investment banking institutions or a combination of the foregoing. This stock repurchase authorization replaces the previous $1 billion stock repurchase authorization, approved by the Board of Directors in 2008.

Financial Guidance

First Quarter 2010 Guidance

• Net sales are expected to be between $6.45 billion and $7.00 billion, or to grow between 32% and 43% compared with first quarter 2009.
• Operating income is expected to be between $275 million and $365 million, or to grow between 13% and 50% compared with first quarter 2009. This guidance includes approximately $110 million for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, and it assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions or investments are concluded and that there are no further revisions to stock-based compensation estimates.