Amazon has just released new data regarding its Kindle sales for the holiday season. According to the e-commerce giant, Amazon customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers. And 2011 was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family, as customers purchased over 1 million Kindle devices each week.
Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said in a statement: “We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle.” Bezos also highlighted the fact that the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their authors using Kindle Direct Publishing.
The Kindle family, including the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch and Kindle, held the top three spots on Amazon’s best seller list, respectively. The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s new tablet device, was the most gifted and wished for product on Amazon this season, and was the top selling product un the UK, France, Spain and Italy. The Kindle Fire was also the best selling product on Amazon’s mobile site.
Gifting of Kindle books was up 175 percent between this Black Friday and Christmas Day compared to the same period in 2010 and Christmas Day was the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads.
For third-party sellers on Amazon, this year proved to be a merry Christmas as well. 2011 was also a record-breaking holiday season for businesses that sell on Amazon. Third-party sellers experienced record holiday growth, with the number of sellers who exceeded $5,000 in sales during the holiday season increased 44 percent year-over-year. For the year, businesses on Amazon sold hundreds of millions of units worth billions of dollars worldwide.
Amazon says this was a record-breaking year for the Kindle family in terms of sales, especially with respect to its newest device, the Kindle Fire. As we wrote previously, the Kindle is actually outpacing the iPad’s post-launch sales rate. And the company hasn’t faced any backorder issues yet.
In the past, Amazon has been reluctant to reveal exact numbers for the quantity of Kindles sold and are even hedging a bit by stating that “over” 1 million Kindles were sold each week in December as opposed to just giving us a precise number for units sold. Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps expected expects 5 million Kindle Fire tablets sold this year.
Other interesting facts revealed by Amazon:
Amazon customers purchased enough copies of Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” book to create a stack taller than Mt. Everest.
The cumulative weight of the Bowflex 552 Adjustable Dumbbells purchased by Amazon customers would outweigh more than 70 adult elephants.
If you unfolded and stacked each pair of jeans purchased by Amazon customers this holiday, the height would be 2,500 times taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Amazon customers purchased enough sweaters to outfit each of Santa’s reindeer during Christmas Eve deliveries for the next 14,000 years.
Amazon customers purchased enough copies of Just Dance 3 to give 15 copies to each person who participated in setting the world record for simultaneous dancing.
Amazon customers purchased enough HeatMax HotHands Handwarmers to give a pair to each resident of Iceland.
Amazon customers purchased enough Rory’s Story Cubes to give a cube to each person watching the New Year’s Eve ball drop live at Times Square.
Comment