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The company saw a year on year growth of 41% in sales, rising to over £2 billion, while profit rose by an impressive 86% to over £100 million.

"We expect that higher fuel prices may be a relative advantage for us," chief financial officer Tom Szkutak tells the Financial Times. "Even driving 10 miles these days is a few dollars of gasoline."

Amazon no longer limits itself to books and CDs, and now also sells consumer electronics and household goods both from its own stock and from a number of third party retailers.

Earlier this month Amazon launched a streaming video service called Video on Demand, which offered 40,000 films and television programmes. The service is currently being trialled by a limited number of customers, and a full roll-out is expected later this summer in the US. UK users will likely have to wait slightly longer.