Although Amazon isn’t being particularly forthcoming about exact sales numbers behind its Kindle eReader, it has revealed that these have almost tripled since the company slashed the price from $259 to $189 some weeks ago.

"We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle--the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com in a company statement.

"In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books--astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."

Amazon’s price reduction means that South African consumers will be able to purchase a Kindle for roughly R1 800 including delivery and customs charges. Delivery time is estimated at between 3 and 7 working days.

In addition to this, local users also have access to 3G support on their devices over the Vodacom network, free of charge. This means that those South Africans who purchase their Kindle through Amazon have access to the Amazon book store over the local 3G network without having to pay service charges for downloading books.

Local users currently have access to a downloadable library of roughly 230 000 titles, 35 000 of which are available for under R44 each.