Amazon.com reported today that its net income for the first quarter increased 68 percent to $299 million, or 66 cents per share, compared with net income of $177 million, or 41 cents per share in the first quarter of 2009.

Analysts expected earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $6.87 billion, according to a consensus forecasts from Thomson Reuters.

"We remain heads-down focused on customers," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

"Amazon Prime has just celebrated its fifth anniversary, adoption of Amazon Web Services continues to accelerate, Kindle remains our #1 bestselling product, and earlier this week, Kindle selection reached 500,000 titles."

Net sales increased 46 percent to $7.13 billion in the first quarter, compared with $4.89 billion for the same period the previous year.

For the second quarter net sales are expected to be between $6.1 billion and $6.7 billion, or to grow between 31 percent and 44 percent compared with the second quarter of 2009.

Operating income is expected to be between $220 million and $320 million, or to grow between 39 percent and 102 percent compared with the same period the previous year.