Although Amazon Kindle is one of the most popular products nowadays, its creator has never disclosed actual shipments figures as well as sales targets. As a result, nobody outside Amazon and its contract manufacturer knows how many electronic book readers the company has sold so far. But on Tuesday unofficial sources said that the company may sell eight million of Kindle's this year, which will exceed expectations.

It appears that Amazon sold 2.4 million Kindle e-book readers back in 2009 and analysts expected the company to ship around 5 million this year, reports Bloomberg news-agency citing anonymous. But in reality the company will sell 8 million Kindle devices, which is 60% higher than some analysts have predicted. According to Amazon's official comments, its third-generation Kindle e-book readers have proven to be the most successful among all and the company was surprised to see that high demand on them in Q4 2010.

At present Amazon ships three versions of Kindle: two 6" versions with Wi-Fi only ($139) and Wi-Fi + 3G ($189) as well as 9" Kindle DX ($379).

Amazon is probably the largest supplier of electronic book readers in the world. But as e-book readers get more affordable, sales of such devices by Barnes & Noble, Sony and others are also growing. Analysts predicted around ten million e-readers to be sold this year, but it is clear that the number will be exceeded significantly.

Amazon did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Amazon, Kindle, E-Book, Nook