Amazon today announced a record-breaking holiday season with more items ordered worldwide than ever before. Amazon customers shopped at record levels from a wide selection of products across every department, discovering top holiday gifts and trending products offered at deep discounts and low prices.
Prime membership continued to grow this holiday season, with tens of millions of people starting Prime free trials or paid memberships, to benefit from FREE Same-Day, One-Day or Two-Day shipping, in addition to FREE two-hour delivery with Prime Now, and exclusive shopping and entertainment benefits. Prime members enjoyed shopping a wide selection of products with fast and free shipping throughout the season – in fact, this holiday millions of unique items in the U.S. shipped with Prime FREE Same-Day, Prime FREE One-Day or FREE two-hour delivery with Prime Now.
“This season was our best yet, and we look forward to continuing to bring our customers what they want, in ways most convenient for them in 2019. We are thrilled that in the U.S. alone, more than one billion items shipped for free this holiday with Prime,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer, in a statement. “Thank you to our employees all around the world who are committed to bringing our customers the widest selection of products with low prices and fast and free delivery options throughout the holidays and all year long.”
Amazon Devices & Alexa
• Customers purchased millions more Amazon Devices this holiday season compared to last year – the best-selling Amazon Devices this holiday included all-new Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick 4K with all-new Alexa Voice Remote, and Echo.
• It was a record holiday season for Amazon’s Kids Edition devices; customers purchased more Echo Dot Kids Edition and Fire Kids Edition tablets than ever before.
• Customers purchased millions of Amazon Fire TV, Fire Tablet, and Kindle products this holiday season.
Ring and Blink sold more devices this holiday season than ever before, as more and more customers are keeping their homes safe.
• Customers made their homes even smarter this year with a record number of smart home devices sold on Amazon.com; best-selling smart home devices included Amazon Smart Plug, Ring Video Doorbell 2, TP-Link Kasa Smart Plug Mini Outlet, and the iRobot Roomba 690.
• Customers used Alexa to listen to hundreds of millions more hours of music this holiday season compared to last holiday season, and on even more services – including Amazon Music, Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, among others.
• Customers asked Alexa to turn on their holiday lights tens of millions of times this holiday season, with the number one request being “Alexa, turn on the Christmas tree.”
• Alexa delivered 8x as many reminders this holiday season compared to last.
• Alexa set more than one hundred million timers this holiday season.
• Customers requested nearly 3x as many recipes this holiday season compared to last and asked Alexa for cooking-related advice twice as much.
• Alexa helped mix hundreds of thousands of cocktails this holiday season – with eggnog and Moscow Mule being the most requested drinks.
• From carolers to delivery drivers and holiday guests, customers received millions of doorbell and motion announcements via Alexa this holiday season.
• Customers were in to the festive spirit with Alexa Skill Blueprints – popular Blueprints this holiday season were The Holiday Story, Santa’s Letter, and the Hallmark Holiday Greeting.
• The number one holiday song that customers requested this holiday season was “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey.
• This holiday season, customers listened to more than one million holiday stories from Amazon Storytime on Alexa – the most popular holiday story was Rapping Paper.
• Customers around the world asked Alexa how many days or sleeps until Christmas this holiday season – customers in the United Kingdom were the most excited, asking twice as much as customers in any other country.
• Customers used Alexa nearly twice as much on Fire TV devices this holiday season compared to the same time period last year.
Amazon Best-Sellers and Seasonal Trends
Toys
• The best-selling toys in the U.S. and worldwide included the L.O.L. Surprise! Glam Glitter Series Doll with 7 Surprises, Nerf N-Strike Elite Strongarm Blaster, Melissa & Doug Scratch Art Rainbow Mini Notes with Wooden Stylus, Crayola Inspiration Art Case, and LEGO Creator Mighty Dinosaurs Toy.
Electronics
• The best-selling electronics this holiday season included Bose QuietComfort 35 (Series II) Wireless Headphones, the Samsung Flat 65″ 4K UHD 8 Series Smart LED TV, Apple iPad (Wi-Fi, 32GB) in Space Gray, Wemo Mini Smart Plug, Blue Yeti USB Microphone in Blackout, Wyze Cam 1080p HD Indoor Wireless Smart Home Camera, and HP Sprocket Photo Paper.
Amazon Brands
• Some of the best-selling products from Amazon brands in the U.S. included Amazon Essentials Men’s Long-Sleeve Plaid Flannel Shirts, Goodthreads Men’s Short-Sleeve Crewneck Cotton T-Shirts, Daily Ritual Women’s Skinny Stretch Jeggings, the Stone & Beam Ceramic Geometric Table Lamp, Pinzon Faux Fur Throw Blankets, AmazonBasics Multipurpose Scissors, Amazon Elements Baby Wipes, Presto! Toilet Paper, and Solimo Dark Roast Coffee K-Cup Pods.
Amazon Fashion
• One of the most popular brands sold on Amazon during the holiday season was Carhartt, with over one million of its items ordered.
• Some of the most popular brands bought with Prime Wardrobe during the holiday season were Amazon Essentials, Daily Ritual and Goodthreads, in addition to Calvin Klein, Champion, and UGG.
• As a top trend, athleisure was a holiday gifting favorite this season with a wide assortment available on Amazon from customer-loved brands including Champion, Alo Yoga, Nike, adidas and Monrow.
• Amazon Essentials and Simple Joys by Carter’s, along with adidas, Columbia, and Nike were some of the most selected fashion brands added to Amazon Wish Lists this holiday season.
Fast and Free Shipping & Delivery
• Customers continued to enjoy FREE two-hour delivery with Prime Now throughout the season, and even up until the last minute – the last Prime Now delivery on Christmas Eve was made at 11:30 pm in Berkeley, CA and included LEGO Super Heroes Captain America Building Kit, a Hallmark card, Greek yogurt, and shampoo.
• The five cities that had the most last minute Prime Now deliveries on Christmas Eve were San Francisco, Austin, Miami, Dallas-Fort Worth and Springfield, VA.
• This holiday season, millions of unique items in the U.S. shipped with Prime FREE Same-Day, Prime FREE One-Day or FREE two-hour delivery with Prime Now.
• In the U.S., more than one billion items shipped for free this holiday with Prime.
More Ways to Shop
Prime
• Prime membership continued to grow this holiday – tens of millions of people worldwide started Prime free trials or began paid memberships, to benefit from FREE Same-Day, One-Day or Two-Day shipping, in addition to FREE two-hour delivery with Prime Now.
Alexa Shopping
• Customers use of Alexa for shopping more than tripled this year compared to last year.
Amazon.com in Spanish
• Customers who made Spanish their language of choice when shopping on Amazon.com this holiday season more than doubled compared to last year, with millions of customers shopping on Amazon.com in Spanish.
Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
• Small and medium-sized businesses had their best holiday season ever in our stores, with items sold growing at a faster rate than retail.
• More than 50 percent of items sold in our stores this holiday season came from small and medium-sized businesses.
Amazon Physical Stores
• Customers enjoyed shopping at our physical stores, including Amazon Books, the brand new Amazon 4-star locations, Amazon Go, and Whole Foods Market to find hot holiday products and edible favorites.
• The best-selling items at Amazon 4-star this holiday season included Amazon Smart Plug, all-new Echo Dot, Becoming by Michelle Obama, L.O.L. Surprise! Under Wraps Doll Series toys, and the DASH Rapid Egg Cooker.
• The best-selling items at Amazon Books this holiday season included Becoming by Michelle Obama, Diary of a Wimpy Kid #13: Meltdown by Jeff Kinney, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Kindle Paperwhite, all-new Echo Dot, and the L.O.L. Surprise! Bling Series toys.
• The best-selling product at Amazon Go this holiday season was Amazon Go Theo Dark Chocolate Bar, Cacao with Sea Salt, and the best-selling freshly prepared food was the chicken bahn mi sandwich.
• Some of the most popular holiday goodies at Whole Foods Market were California Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon wines, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, brown butter chocolate chip cookies, and 365 Everyday Value traditional eggnog.
• Prime members saved tens of millions of dollars this holiday season from Prime member deals at Whole Foods Market.
• The best-selling Prime member deal at Whole Foods Market this holiday was turkeys.
• Customers opted to eat healthy between holiday feasts – the best-selling items for Prime Now pick up at Whole Foods Market were organic honeycrisp apples, boneless/skinless chicken breasts, and Atlantic farm-raised salmon filets.
• The fastest grocery delivery this holiday season took place in St. Paul, Minnesota and was delivered in 12 minutes and 19 seconds, and contained La Croix Sparkling Water and Zevia soda.
• Cities that opted for convenience and had the most grocery delivery via Prime Now and Whole Foods Market were Boston, Hoboken, NJ, and San Francisco.
Community Engagement
• This holiday season, Amazon unveiled an easy way for customers to donate a toy to a child in need via Alexa. Since its launch, thousands of customers have donated a toy to Toys for Tots with Alexa, and Amazon has matched each donation toy for toy, delivering smiles to thousands of deserving children.
• Amazon Future Engineer launched in November, and aims to inspire more than 10 million kids each year to explore computer science, help over 100,000 underprivileged young people in over 2,000 high schools in lower income communities take introductory or Advanced Placement (AP) courses in computer science, and provide 100 students from underrepresented communities with four-year $10,000 scholarships as well as guaranteed internships to gain work experience.
• Amazon enjoyed #DeliveringSmiles this holiday season making more than $1 million in donations across the country to various organizations supporting homeless children and families during the month of December.
About Amazon
Source: Amazon.com, Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, Amazon continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Good thing Apple and Amazon have kissed and made up!
SEE ALSO:
Apple Music now available on Amazon Echo speakers via Alexa in the U.S. – December 14, 2018
Apple Music comes to Amazon Echo smart speakers starting December 17th – November 30, 2018
Amazon strikes deal with Apple to sell new iPhones, iPads, and more worldwide – November 9, 2018
I’m not as impressed as MDN.
Amazon may have sold more items but they are not saying how much revenue those sales generated. I’m betting ASP is down. Personally, I almost never buy expensive things from Amazon because I can find better terms elsewhere and expensive items are often sold by game-playing affiliates rather than Amazon itself. Buying inexpensive, small stuff is convenient, is usually sold by Amazon and you can be pretty sure the price is probably as low as you can find it.
Also, the busier Whole Foods get the slower Amazon will grow (WFs is in a slow growth industry) and it will make profitability harder to grow. Whole Foods is facing increasing competition which decreases their ability to generate good margins.
I think Bezos was just getting depressed about the stock price and, as usual, put out a missive with lots of words without really disseminating any hard information. Let’s wait for the quarterly results.
I am so glad there are people like you telling us why Amazon has so little value…
so I could buy shares cheap and triple my money!
Thank you for “enlightening” us.
MDN take is spot on. What is most impressive is record sales for Amazon that includes selling Apple products and products that support Apple Music…
Online ordering with free pickup in the parking lot (along with your grocery and other regular items) of Walmart and virtually every other major retailer rolling out quickly now will take a toll on Amazon. Besides everyone alert mathches Amazons prices, there’s no there there anymore.
Is anyone surprized by this?
Baring some massive depression… next year will even be bigger.
And unfortunately at the cost of mom and pop brick and mortar stores and their charm and the charm of actually going shopping..
But hey… that is the new way… … umm ..what is it called ? Progress?
Most of what I buy comes from Amazon these days. Pretty much almost everything.
I don’t support Amazon’s goal of gutting every Main Street of small businesses. One can immediately tell high quality and durability plus excellent customer service when shopping at a reputable retailer. Your money stays in your local community, supporting people you know. One wonders what percentage of the junk sold online will be returned because the buyer discovered it was nothing like the online photoshopped picture. Bezos laughs all the way to the bank while his minions keep shipping imported chinese plastic junk to indiscriminating consumers.