Well, if the sales figures being reported by TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington are indeed correct, the Kindle is a hit. Since February, a source indicates 300,000 Kindle 2’s have been sold, and the device is shipping out at a rate twice as fast as the original model.

Extrapolating that out through the rest of the year, that suggests 1.7 million Kindles will sell in 2009, and at a $359 retail price generate a staggering $592 million in revenues for Amazon. This isn’t even considering an uptick in sales as we approach the holidays: so in all likelihood the figures could be even rosier than this.

Amazon is much more conservative, estimating sales of 800,000 during the year. But still, that would mean a quarter billion in revenues would come from its e-book efforts — not too shabby.

It’s not clear whether demand has dropped, or production has increased, but Kindles are finally back in stock on Amazon after being backordered nearly since the original device’s release.

You have to credit Amazon: it saw an untapped market for electronic books and was able to capitalize on it. And with consumer’s increasing hunger for things digitally, it may have answered an inevitable problem with its business: what happens when people stop buying paper books?

 
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