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Amazon has reported a 22% rise in sales over the last three months, the same growth increase as the previous quarter. The internet giant said it achieved a net sales hike of 22% to $16.07 billion (£10.41bn) in the first three months to 31st March 2013, compared with $13.18 billion (£8.5bn) in the first quarter of 2012.
It also reported a rise in gross profit margin, but net income decreased by 37% to $82million (£53m), or $0.18 a share.
Amazon does not break out results on a country-by-country basis, but it revealed North American sales saw a steeper rise than its international sales, with North America achieving an increase of 26.4% to $9.4bn (£6.1bn) in the first three months of the year.
International sales, which includes the UK and Europe, increased by 15.9% to $6.7bn (£4.3bn) by contrast. The results also revealed total media sales in North America, which includes print books and digital books, increased 7% in the quarter, to $2.5bn (£1.6bn), while electronics and other general merchandise, including sales of Kindle devices, increased 28%, to $6.1bn (£4.0bn). Internationally, media sales increased by just 1.2% to $2.6bn (£1.7bn) in comparison to 21% a year earlier, while electronics and other device sales rose by 28% to $4.2bn (£2.7bn) in comparison to 40% in the same quarter of 2011.
Amazon’s results also revealed the company spent 31.6% more on marketing in the last quarter compared with the same quarter in 2012, shelling out $632m (£409.5m).
The company revealed it had increased digital titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to over 300,000 books over the period.
Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, chose to highlight the company’s new television pilots in which he invited customers to determine what goes into “full season production”.
For the second quarter, Amazon is projecting sales to rise 13% to 26% over last year’s second quarter with the company expecting an operating loss of as much as $340 million to a profit of $10 million. In last year’s second quarter, Amazon had operating profits of $107 million.