Amazon Keeps Building on Digital Transformation

Sales of downloadable digital media continue to gain ground on conventional formats—last week, Apple’s iTunes passed Wal-Mart as top US music seller. Not to be outdone, Amazon.com is rapidly expanding its venues for digital Web delivery, the New York Times reports. This year, the company debuted a music download store, its Unbox video service and the recent download-capable Kindle e-book reader.

All three services have experienced growing pains: AmazonMp3 and Unbox have suffered format missteps, and the Kindle has been plagued by supply shortages. But executives are confident they will mature. “We wake up every day thinking about digital,” said Amazon’s vice president for digital media, who explains that founder Jeff Bezos can’t “imagine anything more important than reinventing the book.” (More Amazon stories.)