While a lot of Amazon customers might have wished Santa's herd of reindeers as one of the delivery options this Christmas, the online retail giant still has a ton of reasons to celebrate. The company's latest press release reveals how customers around the world prefer its $79 Amazon Prime membership that offers free two-day deliveries, and some more.
According to Amazon, about a million people signed up for the premium membership just in the third week of December. It also disclosed that it made history as more Prime items were delivered to doorsteps of customers across the globe than ever before. Amazon boasted that it had to limit the signups so the system will not slow down with the wave of new members. Analysts estimate Amazon Prime members to be around 20 million.
"Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and we now have tens of millions of members worldwide. They benefit from all-you-can-eat free two-day shipping on millions of eligible items and our members have a voracious appetite. We are extremely grateful to our customers around the world and wish everyone the very best for the coming year," said Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos through a press statement.
The yearly holiday recap lists interesting facts and figures.
"On Cyber Monday, customers ordered more than 36.8 million items worldwide, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second," the company disclosed. "More than half of Amazon customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday.Between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, Amazon customers ordered more than five toys per second from a mobile device."
In comparison, during the 2012 holiday season, customers ordered 306 items every second or around 26.5 million items during the peak of shopping.
The newest gaming consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One also sold like hot pancakes over the holidays with 1,000 purchases a minute at peak of sales. The same is true for Xbox 360 game titles such as "Call of Duty: Ghosts" and "Grand Theft Auto V" and Wii's "Just Dance 2014."
While not revealing the exact figures, Amazon claims that the Kindle Fire HDX and Kindle Fire HD were among its top sellers at Amazon.com.
Samsung was the winner in terms of TV sales with its 32-inch Smart LED, 40-inch LED , and 22-inch Slim LED HDTVs leading the pack.
Microsoft's Scroogled campaign supporters might raise their eyebrows with Amazon disclosing the Samsung Chromebook and the Acer Chromebook were among its best sellers this holidays season.
It appears Amazon has more than achieved its A to Z goals this year and has enough reason to set more challenging targets for 2014.
