Amazon's hockey-puck sized smart speaker was its top seller this holiday
AP
According to a press release put out on Tuesday, Amazon says its Echo Dot smart speaker was the top seller for the "2016 holiday" - which Amazon defines as November 1 onwards - with the Fire TV Stick media streamer, Fire tablet, and standard Echo speaker following behind.
As usual, Amazon declined to share specific sales figures, so take the boasts with a grain of salt.
That said, the fact that Amazon-made devices were the most popular products on Amazon's site isn't much of a shock. The Fire tablet and Fire TV Stick were two of the three highest sellers last holiday, according to the company, and Amazon usually makes links to its products and services very prominent throughout its online store. That the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, and Fire tablet all cost less than $50 helps, too.
James Cook/BI
Amazon, for its part, says that Echo device sales were up nine times over the 2015 holiday season, though that's to be expected with the release of the $50 Echo Dot earlier this year.
The smart speaker space as a whole continues to be one of interest. Google launched its $130 Home speaker - which Amazon does not directly sell on its site - this past October, and multiple reports have said that Apple is working on its own Echo competitor as well.
In any case, all four of Amazon's top-selling devices now come with its Alexa voice assistant in some form, so it looks like more than a few families will welcome the AI into their homes going into 2017. That should make the company happy, given how it's opened up Alexa to a growing number third-party devices in the past year.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
- US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
- 2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
- A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
- 9 health benefits of drinking sugarcane juice in summer
- 10 benefits of incorporating almond oil into your daily diet
- From heart health to detoxification: 10 reasons to eat beetroot
- Why did a NASA spacecraft suddenly start talking gibberish after more than 45 years of operation? What fixed it?
- ICICI Bank shares climb nearly 5% after Q4 earnings; mcap soars by ₹36,555.4 crore