Amazon's Third-Gen Kindle Outsells Harry Potter's Latest, More Holiday Fun Facts

It seems like Christmas must be a great time to be an Amazon shareholder. Last December, the company broke all kinds of sales records at this point in the year. And this year, they're celebrating again. The newest Kindle, which is in its third iteration, has just replaced "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" as the best-selling product in Amazon's history. That's a huge milestone. Millions upon millions of those books were printed, and while Amazon certainly is not the only book retailer to sell them, we are pretty confident in saying that Amazon moved quite a few of them.


Per usual, Amazon is refraining from admitting exactly how many Kindles were sold, but this gives more of an indication than ever before. Of course, the Kindle wasn't the only thing shining at Amazon's holiday party. The company also managed to ship 350k packages to APO/FPO addresses, and they hit 178 countries in total. On the peak shopping day of the holiday season, Amazon's network shipped over 9 million units, which is a mind-boggling number to think about. Read on below for lots more fun facts, and sit back in awe as you think about the kind of manpower necessary to make this all happen.

• On Christmas Day, more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history.
• On the peak day this season, Amazon's worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 9 million units across all product categories.
• Amazon shipped to 178 countries.
• One of Amazon's most remote shipments contained the "Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue," "Toy Story" DVDs, "Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul," NHL 11, Halo Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops and was delivered to the hamlet of Grise Fiord, north of the Arctic Circle in Canada.
• Amazon shipped over 350,000 units to APO/FPO addresses.
• Amazon.com 2010 Holiday Facts (www.amazon.com only):
• Kindle (Wi-Fi) and Kindle 3G were the best-selling products on Amazon.com this holiday season.
• "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was the most purchased Kindle book on Christmas Day.
• "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was the most gifted Kindle book on Christmas Day.
• Of Amazon's top 500 most popular Kindle books, "The Dork Diaries" saw the greatest gain in popularity on Christmas Day.
• There were millions of Price Checks from Black Friday through the FREE Super-Saver Shipping cut-off date (for delivery before Christmas).
• During the holiday season, the biggest mobile shopping days for iPad, iPhone and Android users was Sunday, however the biggest mobile shopping day for BlackBerry users was Friday.
• The last One-Day Prime order that was delivered in time for Christmas, was placed on Dec. 23 at 6:48 p.m. PST and shipped to Billerica, Mass., for delivery on Dec. 24. The item was a Nautica Men's NST Chronograph Bracelet Watch.
• The last Local Express Delivery order that was delivered in time for Christmas was placed by a Prime member and went to Woodinville, Wash. It was an Apple Mac Mini that was ordered at 1:41 p.m. on Christmas Eve and delivered at 8:04 p.m. that evening.
• Amazon customers purchased enough snow/tire chains to outfit the entire population of three of America's top ski cities: Aspen, Breckenridge and Sun Valley.
• For the holiday time period alone, Amazon customers bought enough copies of "Eclipse" for Edward Cullen to watch the movie 1,000 times a day for all 109 years of his life.
• Amazon customers purchased so many pairs of jeans that if you folded each pair and stacked them on top of each other, the height would be the equivalent of Mt. Everest.
• Amazon customers purchased enough Kyjen Hide-a-Squirrels to hide one toy squirrel everyday for the next 100 years.
• Amazon customers purchased more Philips Norelco shavers this holiday season than the average beard hairs on a man's face.