Prime Day the “biggest day ever” for Amazon and its Alexa devices

Amazon reported earlier this morning that the second Prime Day was its biggest day ever. Despite some well-documented issues, orders were 60 percent higher than in 2015, which included large sales of Amazon devices. Mobile orders were more than 2X those of last year.

Amazon released a long list of products that sold well and other success metrics. The following are a few Amazon-specific highlights:

• Fire TV Stick was Amazon’s best-selling device globally.
• More than a million customers used the Amazon app for the first time on Prime Day.
• It was the largest sales day for Amazon Echo — up over 2.5X compared to the previous record day.
• Members purchased on average one Alexa-exclusive deal per second during Prime Day using their voice.

While the company didn’t release specific sales figures for Echo/Alexa devices, boosted by a $50-off incentive, they were probably quite significant. Echo has outsold Kindle in the past several quarters.

The Alexa voice-based commerce sales are also significant and may be the most interesting piece of information in the Amazon release. Alexa voice purchasing offered a $10-off incentive on top of other discounts. Enter the era of “v-commerce.”

The further penetration of Alexa-powered virtual assistant devices is significant. Alexa-powered devices (together with Siri, Google Now and Cortana) educate people about voice search and virtual assistants, which has broader implications for the “search” market over time.

Prime Day was initiated last year to generate more Prime subscriptions. According to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), Amazon Prime now has 63 million members in the US, each of whom spends on average $1,200 per year. A slight majority of US Amazon customers are now Prime subscribers.

Any way you look at it, Amazon Prime has been a wildly successful commerce driver and loyalty tool for the company. Prime subscribers now spend 2X what non-Prime shoppers spend and will drive $75 billion in sales on Amazon this year, according to CIRP.