Amazon always likes to offer a few shopping stats for the holiday season, and this year is no exception.
In a post on its website that included the word “millions” 14 times, the company said that this year its online shopping site saw more items ordered worldwide than ever before. Just like it said last year.
While it never releases specific figures, Amazon listed its Alexa-enabled Echo smart speakers as among its top sellers this holiday season. Indeed, sales of the speakers were so strong that the sudden uptick in connections to Amazon servers appeared to knock Alexa offline for a short time on December 25.
With Alexa becoming an increasingly important part of its platform, Amazon was keen to share some stats about its digital assistant. For example, people used Alexa to listen to “hundreds of millions more hours of music this holiday season compared to last holiday season,” while the box of tricks was also commanded to turn on holiday lights “tens of millions of times.”
Customers requested nearly three times as many recipes this holiday season compared to last year, and asked Alexa for cooking-related advice twice as much, the ecommerce giant revealed. The smart assistant also helped to mix “hundreds of thousands of cocktails this holiday season — with eggnog and Moscow Mule being the most requested drinks.”
The company added that online shoppers spent a decent wedge of cash on making their homes smarter this year with sales of “a record number” of smart home devices that included the Amazon Smart Plug, the Ring Video Doorbell 2, and the iRobot Roomba 690.
Besides its own devices, other top-selling electronics on Amazon this holiday season included Bose QuietComfort 35 (Series II) wireless headphones, the Samsung Flat 65-inch 4K UHD 8 Series Smart LED TV, and Apple’s iPad, specifically the Wi-Fi-only model with 32GB.
As it continues its efforts to become the one-stop shop for just about everything you can think of, Amazon revealed that “tens of millions of people worldwide” signed up to Prime for a free trial or began paid memberships, while in the U.S. alone, “more than one billion items” shipped for free during the holiday period.
If you’re still not done and are up for one more shopping splurge before the end of the year, then check out Digital Trends’ carefully curated selection of the latest deals in tech.
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