[ProfCrash]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385398,00.asp

Amazon's best-selling Kindle e-reader is its newest and cheapest—and the one that's got ads, according to the company's bestseller chart.

The $114, Wi-Fi-enabled Kindle with "Special Offers and Sponsored Screensavers" is actually the bestselling device of any type sold on Amazon. The top five is rounded out by the $139 version of the Wi-Fi-only Kindle without ads, the $189 Kindle with Wi-Fi plus 3G, the 32GB Apple iPod Touch, and lastly, the 8GB iPod Touch.

The ad-supported Kindle has been on sale for about a month. Amazon doesn't break down actual shipping numbers, but it's clear that many Kindle buyers are willing to live with advertising that appears on the home screen and in the screen saver rather than part with an extra $25 to avoid the ads.

Price drops for the Kindle and the new ad platform have been linked by some industry watchers to rumors that Amazon has a full-fledged media tablet in the works.

The thinking goes that Amazon will want to price its e-readers comfortably lower than any tablet it makes to compete with Apple's iPad and other such devices. It could also introduce a tablet, possibly running Google's Android mobile operating system, that uses an ad-based platform to further compete on price with other tablets on the market.

Amazon has also placed an increased emphasis on Android recently. Earlier this year, it opened its own Android Appstore. The company also unveiled a cloud-based music servicethat lets users store their music for free online and play it via Macs, PCs, and Android-based tablets and phones (but not iOS devices).

Whatever Amazon might release, however, it won't supplant the Kindle. The popular e-reader has clearly been an important product for Amazon, and one analyst predicted that revenue generated from the device will top $5 billion in 2011.