Amazon has wrapped up what it is calling its “best ever” holiday, and the online retailer has added an additional one million subscribers to its Amazon Prime service in a short span of time. A press release from the retailer pointed out that Amazon Prime gained another million subscribers – at $79 per year each – in just the third week of December. On the whole, the 2013 holiday shopping season produced solid results for Amazon, with more than 36.8 million items ordered worldwide on Cyber Monday, and enough items shipped with Prime this holiday to deliver at least one gift to every household in America.
Amazon Prime memberships reportedly grew fast enough this holiday season that the retailer temporarily limited new Prime membership signups during peak periods. This was in order to ensure that service to existing Prime members was not disrupted.
“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,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “We are extremely grateful to our customers around the world and wish everyone the very best for the coming year.”
Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX tablets were the best selling tablets on the site this holiday season, though Amazon again declined to mention how many devices it sold. Chromebooks from Samsung and Acer were the top-selling notebooks, along with the Transformer Book from Asus.
Sales of the new Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles were also quite brisk through the online retailer. At points of peak activity, Xbox and PS4 units were selling at more than 1,000 units per minute.
