Amazon’s Bezos Freezes Salary To Bet On Kindle Success

Jeffrey Bezos, founding CEO of Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), froze his salary for the third consecutive year at $81,840. He also received $1.6 million in other compensation, the company's proxy said.

The Amazon CEO remained the lowest-paid among the executives of the world's biggest e-retailer, as Bezos bets the company on strategy of selling Kindles and Kindle Fires to compete against the iPad from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), the world's most valuable technology company.

To be sure, Bezos, 48, owns 87.9 million shares of the Seattle company, about a 19.5 percent stake, valued at $16.65 billion at Tuesday's price of $189.46, up $3.96. Amazon shares have gained nearly 10 percent this year but only 5.3 percent for the past year.

The shares slumped 11 percent on Feb. 2 after the company reported fourth-quarter revenue and net income that were below analyst estimates. Revenue of $17.4 billion was about $900 million below estimates and net income fell 57 percent to $177 million, or 38 cents a share.

Bezos said Amazon would move aggressively to flood the market with Kindles to battle the iPad, as well as sell more titles, programs and services at a lower cost than the Cupertino, Calif., electronics giant.

The proxy for Amazon's annual meeting scheduled for May 24 in Seattle, also shows only one senior official got a raise last year: Jeffrey A. Wilke, senior VP for consumer business, got a $5,000 raise to $165,000 plus shares valued at $3,200 contributed to his 401(k) retirement plan.

Amazon's market capitalization is $86.2 billion.