Amazon says shopping season was ‘best ever’

updated 2:00 p.m. ET Dec. 26, 2006

SEATTLE - Amazon.com Inc.’s 2006 holiday season peaked with more than 4 million orders placed on Dec. 11, the Web retailer said Tuesday. That broke last year’s single-day record of more than 3.6 million orders set on Dec. 12.

In its 12th holiday season, Amazon.com said it again had its “best ever” sales and that it shipped more than 99 percent of orders in time to meet holiday deadlines around the globe. As many as 3.4 million units went out in a single day.

The company said it sold 1,000 Xbox 360 game consoles in 29 seconds as part of a promotion that slashed two-thirds off the regular retail price. Demand for the Microsoft Corp. machines was so high that Amazon.com’s site bogged down briefly on Thanksgiving Day, generating bitter complaints from shoppers and forcing the retailer to change procedures for subsequent promotions.

(MSNBC.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal News.)

Amazon.com also said customers ordered enough orange-flavored Airborne cold-fighting supplements to supply every passenger on 192 Boeing 747 planes.

Apple Computer Inc.’s iPods, Canon Inc.’s Powershot Digital Elph cameras and Garmin Ltd.’s navigational devices using Global Positioning System technology were among the best-selling consumer electronics items. Amazon.com also sold the most expensive digital music player to date, for $19,999.

Among the top-selling DVD titles was “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” starring Johnny Depp. Best-selling books included Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” and “You: On a Diet” by Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen.

Shares of Amazon.com dipped 56 cents to $39.68 in midday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

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