Amazon breaks holiday sales record again, aided by Alexa voice purchases

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, especially if you're Amazon.

In a press release Wednesday, the e-commerce giant announced its strongest holiday season in the company's history. According to Amazon, more items were ordered from the company during this year’s holiday shopping season than ever before.

Amazon said in the U.S., more than one billion items were shipped by the company for free through its Amazon Prime service. The company also said that tens of million people started an Amazon Prime trial or subscription this holiday season in order to take full advantage of the free, fast, and last minute shipping options. The final Prime Now delivery before December 25 was on Christmas Eve at 11:30pm in Berkeley, Calif.

Amazon’s holiday shopping announcement is filled with other interesting facts about new retail trends. One especially surprising statistic is that the use of Amazon's voice assistant Alexa for shopping more than tripled compared to last year.

Amazon also announced that millions of Alexa-powered Amazon devices, like the Echo Dot, were sold this year.

Other items on Amazon's best selling tech this year included the Bose QuietComfort 35 Series II Wireless Headphones, the Samsung Flat 65" 4K UHD 8 Series Smart LED TV, the 32GB Apple iPad in Space Gray with Wi-Fi, Wemo Mini Smart Plug, Blue Yeti Blackout USB Microphone, and the Wyze Cam.

Another noteworthy stat Amazon points out is that more than half of the purchases made through its website were from Amazon marketplace stores. The e-commerce giant has been promoting the use of its platform by smaller businesses in recent months, so this makes complete sense. So if you were feeling guilty about making any last-minute purchases this year, just know that you weren't alone.