3 Million Amazon Kindles Sold, Apparently

“Millions of people now own Kindles,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com yesterday. That surprised analysts, who thought that Amazon would sell 2.5 million or so of the devices by the end of 2010, nearly a year from now.

We’ve checked with our sources, who have been amazingly accurate on the number of Kindle’s sold over the last couple of years. The total number of all types of Kindles out there in users hands hit 3 million sometime in December, says a source close to Amazon. And that was before the new model with worldwide data hit. And before Amazon started offering free Kindles to select long-time customers.

The Kindle now has real competition from the Barnes & Noble Nook and, more so, from the Apple iPad. But so far at least Amazon has had amazing success with their device. Which is even more extraordinary since the only place you can buy the Kindle is Amazon.