Amazon Sets Holiday Shopping Records Despite Making Half Of What It Made Last Year

Amazon Sets Holiday Shopping Records Despite Making Half Of What It Made Last Year


On its peak day this holiday shopping season, Amazon sold an astonishing 26.5 million items at a rate of 306 items per second. And the honour of being the “#1 best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product” goes to Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD. The release is chock full of wins for Amazon but take a look at the below image:

That’s crazy, right? If Amazon is selling boat loads of Kindles and delivering over 23 million forms of digital content on Christmas day, how in the hell did their net income drop off by nearly half of what it was in 2011? Is Amazon hemorrhaging money subsidising Kindles? Not exactly. Or at all really.

In the past year, Amazon acquired four notable technology companies along with several other smaller companies across various verticals. Kiva, an online fulfillment company, cost the company a whopping $US775 million earlier this year. Amazon also acquired UpNext, a 3D mapping company, for an undisclosed sum that’s likely around the $US2.5 million mark.

So yeah, despite a massive dive in total net income this year, I wouldn’t go selling off my Amazon stock anytime soon. (Not that I own any Amazon stock.)


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