Operating income could be a problem, though: Factoring out foreign exchange swings and a one-time charge, Amazon delivered pro forma operating income of $240 million, and Wall Street was looking for something like $260 million.

As Henry Blodget points out, Amazon’s North America media sales (books, CDs, DVDs, etc.) have flat-lined in the last year. This is what that looks like in graph form (click to enlarge):

Now listening to the stultifying earnings call, which does not feature Jeff Bezos. Assuming there’ll be questions about the Zappos deal; I also assume that Amazon (AMZN) won’t have much to say about it beyond the announcement it put out yesterday. But I’ll add in any highlights below.

Q. Mary Meeker wants to know if Amazon is seeing a slowdown in media sales due to the transition to digital. She’s also interested in the possibility that mobile could be a big deal.

A. Media is slow, but it doesn’t seem to be related to digital. Still very early, and Amazon is seeing good unit growth there (Kindle, MP3 store, movie service). Not much to say about mobile.

Q. Any plans to take Kindle overseas?

A. Nonanswer.

But while there are plenty of people–from Google (GOOG) on down–waiting for marketers to start shoveling money into phone advertising, it has yet to happen. And it’s certainly not going to happen in the next few years, as advertisers stick to markets they understand already. MediaPost:

Quentin George, president, global digital strategy and marketing innovation at Universal-McCann, agreed that marketers are likely to be less adventurous in exploring newer platforms in the midst of a severe downturn. Even if funding for more experimental campaigns doesn’t completely dry up, projects will take longer to complete. ‘A cool idea that might have taken two months to complete might now take six or nine months,’ he said.

The grim outlook for ad spending into next year is bad news for much-hyped categories such as mobile and digital out-of-home advertising. ‘With the economy the way it is, (mobile) is one of the least areas clients are going to be looking at because it’s more of a test-and-learn situation,’ Speciale said.

Bob Thacker, senior vice president of advertising and marketing for OfficeMax, compared mobile to soccer: ‘It’s popular in the rest of the world, but we haven’t learned how to play it yet.’ From a media-buying perspective, Matt Spiegel, CEO of Digital Omnicom Media Group Digital, added that mobile is ‘just complex to buy at scale.’ Couple that complexity with more austere budgets and mobile becomes even less desirable as an ad option.”

[Image Credit: aussiegall]