Amazon has revealed that over 1 million Kindles were sold each week in December, with the Kindle Fire tablet being the top selling product on Amazon.com for Christmas. In addition, gifting of Kindle books was up by 175 per cent on Amazon.com year on year, and the two of the top five ebooks sold were self-published through the online retailer's Kindle Online Publishing scheme.

The Kindle was also the number one product on a number of its sites internationally, including Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es and Amazon.it. And Christmas Day saw a record number of Kindle book downloads.

"We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. "And in a huge milestone for independent publishing, we’d also like to congratulate Darcie Chan, the author of ‘The Mill River Recluse,’ andChris Culver, the author of ‘The Abbey,’ for writing two of the best-selling Kindle books of the year."

It is believed that the Kindle Fire will be hitting the UK early into the new year, with many claiming that this could be as early as a January release. It is presumed that its price point of $199 is a majorly contributory reason for its success, and that it will weigh in at £125. Some even claim that it could hit Amazon.co.uk at £100.

Watch this space.

Have you had a play on a Kindle Fire? Do you think it's a worthy rival to the iPad? Let us know in the comments below...