Amazon's Prime Day 2016 Was an Unbridled Success

Amazon Prime Day’s record sales pretty much guaranteed Prime Day 2017

Prime Day 2015’s unbridled success cast some doubt as to whether Prime Day could live up to the original. Fortunately for Amazon, not only did the company’s self-created “holiday” surpass expectations, but it was its biggest sales day ever and pretty much confirmed Prime Day’s continuation.

Amazon did not say how many people signed up for its Prime service, which nets customers free two-day shipping, access to Prime Video and Prime Music, and other amenities, though the company was more than happy to toot its own horn by announcing it sold hundreds of thousands of Kindle devices. Overall, three times more Amazon-branded devices were purchased during Prime Day 2016 than during last year’s festivities. Furthermore, Amazon sold 2.5 times more Fire TV devices than on Prime Day 2015, with the Fire TV Stick Amazon’s best-selling device for the day.

Interestingly, Amazon Alexa, the brains behind the Echo and its smaller siblings, was used to buy one Alexa-exclusive deal per second on Prime Day. As for the Echo itself, it sold 2.5 times more than during its previous record day, jiving well with Amazon’s aspirations to be the center of your smart-home devices.

Finally, more Prime members are using the Amazon app to make their orders, with double the number of orders during Prime Day 2016 when compared to last year.

Amazon itself may have performed quite well on Prime Day, but that does not mean third-party devices were left in the dust. According to Amazon, it sold over 200,000 headphones, over 14,000 Lenovo laptops, and over 23,000 of those adorable iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaners.

The company even broke down Prime Day’s best-selling devices by country, with Spain really liking SanDisk USB memory sticks and U.S. residents liking pressure cookers that can do it all. Canadians, meanwhile, opted for over-ear headphones, while the French and Belgians are hotly anticipating winter’s arrival. Germany and Austria went for a frying pan, Italy also went for a flash drive, the Japanese really liked their 800-gram cereal, and the U.K. believed regular toothbrushes did not have enough electricity in them.

Overall, according to FBIC analyst Deborah Weinswig, Amazon might have garnered $525 million in sales, a jump from the estimated $415 million made in sales during last year’s Prime Day. Such a jump was partly attributed to Amazon rolling out deals every five minutes instead of the 10-minute gap Prime Day 2015 had.

Unfortunately, Prime Day 2016’s success did not translate to higher share prices, as Amazon shares actually closed slightly lower earlier today at $742.63, according to CNBC. Even so, Amazon is sure to continue its fake consumer-centric holiday for years to come, with Prime Day 2017 sure to bear even greater expectations.

Editors' Recommendations