Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos confirmed on Thursday that the online retailer sells its Kindle e-reader "at cost", with profit coming instead from sales of online content.

Bezos' remarks, in an interview with the BBC, marked the first time the company had confirmed long-held Wall Street assumptions that it did not make a profit on sales of the popular tablet.

The aggressive pricing furthers Bezos' goal of getting Kindle tablets into the hands of as many buyers of Amazon's online content -- from games and books to video -- as possible.

Apple, by contrast, makes much of its profit from hardware sales. It sells a single-sized iPad at costs ranging from $399 to $829, depending on storage capacity, screen resolution and wireless connectivity.

(Reporting by Michelle Conlin; Editing by Ken Wills)