A Very Amazon Christmas For Apple, Nintendo, and the BBC

wii1.jpgAmazon released some holiday statistics today, saying this was its “best season ever”—which is what it says every year. The peak shopping day this year for Amazon was December 10 (as it was for all e-tailers—”Green Monday” strikes again), when it shipped 5.4 million items. That is a 35 percent increase from last year’s peak day total of 4 million items. On contrast, last year’s peak day total showed only an 11 percent increase from 2005.

These numbers are all items shipped, not revenues, and they are only for one day, so while they may be indicative of the general trend in holiday sales for Amazon, don’t try to extrapolate too much from them. Amazon seems to have retired its more informative Delight-O-Meter (last seen in 2005), which counted all items shipped during the holiday season.

What were some of the individual best-sellers this year? Apple was one clear winner, but there were also some surprises.

nokia-internet-tablet.pngIn computers, Apple’s 13-inch white Macbook topped the list, but showing surprising strength at No. 5 was Nokia’s N800 Internet Tablet PC (shown at right).

In electronics, Apple iPods took four of the top five spots, but coming in at No. 2 was Amazon’s own Kindle book reader. (Garmin took the No. 6 slot with its portable GPS Navigator).

In video games (which mixes consoles with actual games), the Nintendo Wii (No. 5) trounced both the Sony PlayStation 3 (No. 14) and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (No. 24). And the Wii wasn’t even in stock all the time. When it was, Amazon was selling 17 every second.

In books, the top three spots went to Eat, Pray, Love, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You).

In DVDs, the awesome BBC series Plant Earth topped the list, beating out Harry Potter and The Bourne Ultimatum.

And in toys, the Jakks EyeCyclops Bionic Eye was the top seller. Who knew that magnifying dog hair 200 times and projecting it on the flat-screen TV could be so much fun?