Amazon: ‘Tens of millions’ of Alexa devices sold

SEATTLE — Amazon’s Alexa had a very good Christmas.

The retailer said on Tuesday that it sold “tens of millions” of devices bearing the Alexa voice-activated digital assistant during the peak shopping season. That lineup includes Amazon’s Echo speakers and Fire TV streaming device, among other gizmos.

Sales of Amazon devices were “millions more” than a year ago, when the company’s holiday release touted sales of Alexa devices as in the “millions.”

The Alexa sales range was among a barrage of factoids Amazon released on its activities during the holiday shopping frenzy.

The disclosures lean toward the self-promotional and the trivial (“An Amazon Air cargo plane can hold more than 10,000 Instant Pots” and “Millions of customers in the U.S. watched deals with Watch a Deal”), but include some limited data points that retail analysts will pick apart for hints at the health of Amazon’s business. Among the more useful set: During a single, unspecified week, 4 million people signed up for paid or trial Amazon Prime memberships. Analysts say subscribers of Amazon’s membership program, which costs $99 a year in the U.S., likely spend more on the retail site than non-members.

More than one billion items were ordered from the legions of independent sellers on Amazon’s Marketplace.

Among Amazon’s expanding fleet of warehouses, 10 facilities managed to pack and ship more than one million packages in a single day, an emerging benchmark for Amazon’s increasingly automated depots.

Use of Amazon’s mobile shopping app worldwide was up 70 percent.

Amazon’s shelves this year were stocked with an expanded range of Alexa-enabled devices, including refined versions of the cylindrical Echo speaker and a smaller, alarmclock-like Echo Spot.