Amazon.com has got to feel good about breaking the record set last year with an impressive four million orders placed on Dec. 11. Last year's single-day high was more than 3.6 million orders set on Dec. 12.
This is the online retailers 12th holiday season and the company says they had their "best ever" sales with more than 99 percent of the orders meeting deadlines worldwide with as many as 3.4 million going out in a single day, according to this NYTimes.com article.
An allout best seller was Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox 360 game consoles, with Amazon selling 1,000 within 29 seconds as a part of a promotion that slashed the regular retail price by two-thirds. The promotion did have a down side with customers complaining about the site freezing up due to the heavy traffic and demand for the discounted item, on Thanksgiving Day. This prompted Amazon.com to change procedures for all upcoming promotions.
Some other top sellers were Apple Computer (AAPL) iPods, Canon (CAJ) PowerShot Digital Elph cameras and Garmin (GRMN) navigational devices using global positioning system technology. I know that was on my Christmas wish list. An interesting aside is the most expensive digital music player sold to date, going for $19,999. Now THAT is what you call a stocking stuffer.
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