Amazon has set quite a number of records this holiday season. Perhaps one of its most glorious marks is the third-generation Kindle’s overthrow of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” as the bestselling product in Amazon’s history. The company also proudly announced that during the peak day last Nov. 29,  13.7 million items were ordered, averaging to 158 items per second, across all categories worldwide.

We’re grateful to the millions of customers who have made the all-new Kindle the bestselling product in the history of Amazon — surpassing Harry Potter 7,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “We’re seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet.

Customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies, and web browsing and their Kindles for reading sessions. They report preferring Kindle for reading because it weighs less, eliminates battery anxiety with its month-long battery life, and has the advanced paper-like Pearl e-ink display that reduces eye-strain, doesn’t interfere with sleep patterns at bedtime, and works outside in direct sunlight, an important consideration especially for vacation reading. Kindle’s $139 price point is a key factor — it’s low enough that people don’t have to choose.

Leveraging with Kindle sales, Kindle “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” apps and Kindle books were also hot on the market like never before. Moreover, Amazon has shipped 9 million items to 178 countries on its peak day, even as far as north of Arctic Circle in Canada, as well as to over 350,000 APO/FPO addresses.

Amazon.com 2010 Holiday Facts (www.amazon.com only):

• Kindle (Wi-Fi) and Kindle 3G were the best-selling products on Amazon.com this holiday season.
• “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was the most purchased Kindle book on Christmas Day.
• “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was the most gifted Kindle book on Christmas Day.
• Of Amazon’s top 500 most popular Kindle books, “The Dork Diaries” saw the greatest gain in popularity on Christmas Day.
• There were millions of Price Checks from Black Friday through the FREE Super-Saver Shipping cut-off date (for delivery before Christmas).
• During the holiday season, the biggest mobile shopping days for iPad, iPhone and Android users was Sunday, however the biggest mobile shopping day for BlackBerry users was Friday.
• The last One-Day Prime order that was delivered in time for Christmas, was placed on Dec. 23 at 6:48 p.m. PST and shipped to Billerica, Mass., for delivery on Dec. 24. The item was a Nautica Men’s NST Chronograph Bracelet Watch.
• The last Local Express Delivery order that was delivered in time for Christmas was placed by a Prime member and went to Woodinville, Wash. It was an Apple Mac Mini that was ordered at 1:41 p.m. on Christmas Eve and delivered at 8:04 p.m. that evening.
• Amazon customers purchased enough snow/tire chains to outfit the entire population of three of America’s top ski cities: Aspen, Breckenridge and Sun Valley.

2010 was a fruitful year for Amazon. It has demonstrated excellence in the e-reader market with several groundbreaking updates and releases. Kindle for Android once released an update that enables customers to search books by voice or text, as well as successfully tap with Windows Phone 7. It also launched 3.0.3 of its software version.

To emphasize its lead on the e-reader market, Amazon released Kindle Singles which offers stories that are of natural length to reach customers who are not into prolonged reading. Amazon is also the first to release an interactive game, Puzzles Unbound, as it aims to be an interactive e-reader. When Google eBookstore launched to compete in the e-book market, Amazon responded to the hype with an announcement of an update which will be made this January. Amazon’s latest dealing so far, before they got very busy for the holiday season, was the expansion of product offerings to periodicals and magazines.