Seattle  - Online retailer Amazon. com Thursday reported a 69 per cent surge in third quarter earnings Thursday as sales surged across all product lines and its Kindle electronic book reader was a hit with customers.

The Seattle-based pioneer of web-retailing said it earned 199 million dollars in the third quarter compared to 118 million dollars in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 28 per cent to 5.45 billion dollars.

"Kindle has become the No. 1 best-selling item by both unit sales and dollars - not just in our electronics store but across all product categories on Amazon. com," Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in the statement.

For the fourth quarter, which includes the key holiday season, Amazon expects revenue of 8 to 9 billion dollars compared to analysts forecasts of 8.13 billion dollars.

The company said North American sales were up 23 per cent from the same quarter last year, to 2.84 billion dollars. International sales were 2.61 billion dollars, an increase of 23 per cent from 2008.

Sales of book, movies and other media grew by 17 per cent to 2.93 billion dollars, while electronics sales jumped 44 per cent to 2.36 billion dollars. (dpa)