With the Christmas season behind us, Amazon is doing a bit of bragging as they released their annual holiday sales report. Unsurprisingly, it’s full of smart home products as consumers shift toward voice-control and home automation.
The #1 seller at Amazon across the holiday shopping season was the Amazon Echo Dot. This isn’t a shock considering how hard Amazon pushed the product along with a 40% price drop after Thanksgiving. We had nothing but praise for the compact smart speaker in our in-depth review back in November.
It wasn’t just the Dot that made it’s presence felt. The Echo Spot and newly released Echo Buttons both sold out shortly before Christmas. a bit of a rarity when it comes to Amazon’s own product line. They were put to good use as Alexa voice control was used to turn on holiday lights over a million times and Jingle Bells was the most requested song on the Echo.
Echo products weren’t the only ones flying off the shelves at Amazon. Miniaturized smart plugs were huge sellers led by the TP-Link mini smart plug and the Belkin Wemo mini smart plug. We’re guessing many of these were used to turn on Christmas trees and other holiday lights with Alexa voice commands. Tile-Mat Key Finders and robot vacuums were also in high demand. And the surprise hit of 2017, the Instant Pot DUO80 even makes the smart home list as they have a handy Alexa skill that can walk you through recipes.
Philips remains king in smart light bulbs as the Philips Hue White (A19) and the Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance 3rd Generation A19 10W Equivalent Dimmable LED Smart Bulb topped the home improvement category. Both bulbs work with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit.
These numbers will be skewed by the fact Amazon isn’t selling Apple or Google smart home devices. We noticed that the Google Home Mini for instance was sold out from many online retailers a week before Christmas. This is a clear sign as to where consumers are placing their interests. Smart speakers and devices that can be controlled through voice controls are huge hits and we only see that trend increasing as products like the Amazon Echo become commonplace in our homes.
Some other tidbits from the release:
- Alexa users asked where Santa was 4 times as much as the previous year.
- Asking for cooking related advice was on the rise as 9 times as many requests were placed with Alexa this season.
- Chocolate chip cookie recipes were most requested.
- Echo devices played holiday music 2.5 times more for people on the East Coast than the West Coast.
- We all wished our robot overlord Alexa Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy Holidays 3.5 times as much as last year.
- The biggest holiday music streamers were New York, Seattle, Chicago, Houston and San Diego.
