Even though "traditional" retail shows only mediocre results, the largest e-commerce retailer has managed to set yet another sales record driving its shares higher.
As of yesterday, Seattle-based e-commerce giant sold more than one billion items in its markets across the globe, what became Amazon's best holiday season performance ever. According to the company's press release, the Amazon Echo digital home assistants together with its smaller alternative Echo Dot were on top of the bestseller list for this year. Worldwide customers bought 9 times more Echo devices this year than they did during last year's holiday season, said Reuters, although the exact sales figures were not disclosed.
"Echo and Echo Dot were the best-selling products across Amazon this year, and we're thrilled that millions of new customers will be introduced to Alexa as a result. Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still had trouble keeping them in stock," said Jeff Wilke, Amazon's head of worldwide consumer division.
According to analysts' estimates, the sales of Amazon Echo and Echo Dot amounted to somewhere between 4 million to 5 million devices worldwide. On top of that, other stats shared by the company also show some interesting shopping trends. This year, more than 72% of all Amazon customers made their purchases through mobile devices, with the most-purchased items being Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Fire TV Stick and Oreo Cookies, said the Financial Post.
Amazon Prime Now that offers extra fast one or two-hour deliveries saw a 300% uptick this year. Reuters cited a number of experts saying that Prime members are Amazon's best bet to drive revenue growth because they are spending twice as much money on purchases as non-Prime consumers. Interestingly, the company doesn't disclose the count of its Prime members while a research agency Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated the number of Prime customers in the U.S. to be approximately 65 million as of October.
To keep up with such high number of orders, Amazon relied on more than 200,000 full-time and seasonal workers, said Tech Times. Reaching a benchmark of one billion shipped products is an important achievement for the company since it missed on earnings per share in the last quarter. The top sales results of Amazon Echo devices also add up some positivity.
On a side note, here are some fun facts to sum up Amazon's impressive holiday results:
“Amazon.com customers purchased enough copies of the Harry Potter: Complete 8-Film Collection to play consecutively for more than 300 years and enough 4K TVs to reach the peak of Mount Everest more than 9 times,” said the company.
As of writing, Amazon (NASDAQ: Amazon.com [AMZN]) shares are up 5.9% to $777.31.