Amazon’s 20th holiday season brought record growth to the company’s fast, free shipping program Amazon Prime – more than 10 million new members worldwide tried Prime for the first time. That’s the lede Amazon used for its annual Dec. 26 “Here’s how awesome we did this holiday season, but let’s not talk about how we did financially” press release.
This year, Amazon disclosed the estimated number of new Prime members (Amazon has been very none-of-you-business-esque about releasing the number of Prime members it has). But at more than 10 million new members at $99 a pop, it’s safe to say Amazon did more than $1 billion this holiday season in Prime memberships alone… if, of course, these 10 billion-plus new members don’t cancel before their free trials are up (as I did back in the spring).
And if you look at the Dec. 26, 2013 press release and compare it to the one Amazon released today (and read between the lines a little bit), there’s good news for the entire ecommerce ecosystem. Amazon did not clog up the transportation infrastructure this holiday season, as it had last year.
As of this moment, there have been no reports of major delays by the carriers, like the ones that put a damper on the 2013 holiday season.