According to the Yougov poll of 2,012 adults, 92% of e-readers sold were Amazon Kindles, with six out of ten received by women. People aged 55 were more than twice as likely as 18 to 24-year-olds to receive one.

Tablet sales were also buoyant with around 640,000 sold over the festive period, 72% of them Apple iPads.

Yougov head of technology and telecoms consulting Marek Vaygelt called 2011 the year that "the late medieval technology of the printing press" was finally challenged by a "21^st century, digital alternative".

Vaygelt added: "Amazon has done a remarkable job of selling the benefits of e-readers and the upside for the publishing industry is that it appears e-reader owners, at least in the early days, buy more e-books than the printed books they purchased before acquiring an e-reader."

David Taylor, group managing director for Lightning Source UK, an on-demand publisher, warned that book printers dependent on offset printing are set to struggle due to the growth in demand for e-books.

He said: "I’m not surprised by the figures as the Kindle was one of the must-have presents for Christmas 2011 and generally we have been seeing a shift in demand from printed books to electronic. I think that things are going to get worse for offset book printers.

"E-books are a good thing for print-on-demand (POD) because it reduces print runs, which is pushing more and more titles into the POD space as publishers seek to reduce their inventories. We see e-books and POD as mutually supportive."

Francis Atterbury, partner at Hurtwood press, added: "The popularity of e-books and e-readers is a good thing for quality books. With music, a lot of people download it and then buy a hard copy of the music that they like.

"The popularity of e-books will impact on sales of badly made books, for example, many popular hardbacks, which are really just softbacks with two boards around them.

"I believe that the future of printed books is all about permanence and quality; if someone just wants data they can download it on an ipad or Kindle; however, you can’t rely on permanence with any digital format."