Amazon misses mark in quarterly

Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, has reported third-quarter results below Wall Street's expectations.

Amazon.com Inc posted a loss of $US274 million ($A266 million), or 60 US cents a share, in the July-September period. That's down from earnings of $US63 million, or 14 US cents share, a year earlier.

The latest quarter's results include a loss of 37 US cents a share related to Amazon's stake in online deals service LivingSocial.

Without this charge, it still would have lost 23 US cents a share, worse than what analysts expected.

Revenue grew 27 per cent to $13.81 billion, from $10.88 billion, also falling short of analysts' expectations.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet, on average, were expecting a loss of seven cents a share on revenue of $13.91 billion.

Amazon said its $199 Kindle Fire HD tablet was its best-selling product worldwide, but as usual, it did not give specific sales figures.

"Our approach is to work hard to charge less. Sell devices near breakeven and you can pack a lot of sophisticated hardware into a very low price point,” founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement.

Amazon will launch a larger version of the Kindle Fire HD next month.

Amazon's results come two days after Apple introduced a smaller iPad, the Mini, for $US329.

In its press release announcing the results, Amazon included a list trumpeting its high-definition Kindle Fires as cheaper than the iPad Mini and with more features.

However, Apple's iPad has a much wider selection of third-party apps.

Seattle-based Amazon's stock slid $US6.42, or 2.9 per cent, to $US216.50 in after-hours trading.

The stock had closed down $US5.57, or 2.4 per cent, at $US222.92 in the regular trading session.