Amazon.com on Monday announced that this past Black Friday was the best ever for its Kindle products with consumers buying four times as many Kindle e- readers and tablets as they did last year.

According to the online retail giant, its newly launched tablet Kindle Fire was the bestselling product across all of Amazon.com on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which falls on Nov. 25 this year, when major retailers in the United States traditionally offer big discounts.

Kindle Fire is Amazon's answer to Apple's popular iPad. Priced at 199 U.S. dollars, the Amazon product is much cheaper than iPad which starts from 499 dollars.

Survey results by research firm ChangeWave Research released days before Black Friday indicated that Amazon is poised to become the No. 2 player in the tablet computer market behind Apple, due to strong demand for Kindle Fire.

Amazon said Black Friday sales also showed that a lot of customers were buying multiple Kindles, one for themselves and others as gifts.

The trend is expected to continue through this holiday shopping season, Amazon's vice president of Kindle products Dave Limp said in a statement.

 VietNamNet/Xinhuanet