It turns out that Amazon’s technical glitch Monday that prevented Prime Day shoppers in the U.S. from accessing the online store for a few hours didn’t hamper the e-commerce giant’s biggest sales promotion of the year.
Amazon said that Prime members worldwide bought more than 100 million products during the 2018 Prime Day event, which spanned 36 hours — another record. The company didn’t release a dollar figure for sales; last year, Amazon announced only that the 2017 Prime Day sales were up 60% from the year prior.
Worldwide, the best-selling product for this year’s Prime Day was Amazon’s Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote (pictured above). The company was selling the streaming-media device in the U.S. at a 50% discount during Prime Day, priced at $19.99 (normally $39.99). The Fire TV Stick not only was the No. 1 selling Amazon device, but also the best-selling product from any manufacturer in any category across Amazon globally.
In the U.S., the other top-selling items were Amazon’s Echo Dot smart speaker, the Instant Pot six-quart multiuse cooker; the 23 and Me DNA Test; and the LifeStraw personal water filter. Small and midsize businesses selling on Amazon “far exceeded” $1 billion in sales during the Prime Day event, according to the company.
Customers purchased more than 5 million items in each of the following categories: toys, beauty products, PCs and computer accessories, apparel, and kitchen products.
Earlier this year, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that the company has more than 100 million paid Prime members. Amazon offers the Prime free-shipping program (which includes other perks like Prime Video) in 17 countries: the U.S., Canada, U.K., Spain, Mexico, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, China, the Netherlands, Singapore, Luxembourg, and Australia.
