It’s official: Technology has taken over our lives. And Amazon has confirmed it. This holiday season, it seems everyone we know gifted, received or purchased for themselves smart home tech, whether it be a Google Home Mini or an Echo Dot — and for good reason. Prices on gadgets this year were so low, it was hard to pass up.
According to a press release from Amazon, customers not only ordered more items worldwide than ever and purchased millions more Amazon devices this holiday season compared to last year, but Amazon’s newly released Alexa stats prove just how dependent we are on our electronics and how we’re basically one step closer to technology domination à la Westworld.
Image: Gfycat.
First, let’s start with Amazon’s top-selling gadgets.
The Echo, Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick 4K with the all-new Alexa Voice Remote were all best-sellers. Millions of Amazon Fire TV, Fire Tablet and Kindle products were sold as well.
In terms of home surveillance and security, Ring and Blink sold more devices this year too.
Adults weren’t the only ones getting techy with it, either. Amazon’s kids edition devices were hot sellers, with customers purchasing more Echo Dot Kids Edition and Fire Kids Edition tablets than ever before.
“This season was our best yet, and we look forward to continuing to bring our customers what they want, in ways most convenient for them in 2019. We are thrilled that in the U.S. alone, more than one billion items shipped for free this holiday with Prime,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO worldwide consumer, in the release.
Now, let’s talk about Amazon’s smart-home devices and how dependent we are on them.
To start, best-sellers included the Amazon Smart Plug, Ring 2 video doorbell, TP-Link Kasa smart plug mini outlet and the iRobot Roomba 690.
In terms of how we use Alexa, customers asked Alexa to do basically everything.
They asked Alexa to turn on their holiday lights tens of millions of times, with the No. 1 request being “Alexa, turn on the Christmas tree.”
Alexa also delivered eight times as many reminders this holiday season compared to last and set more than 100 million timers. Customers requested nearly three times as many recipes this holiday season compared to last and asked Alexa for cooking-related advice twice as much. Customers listened to more than 1 million holiday stories from Amazon Storytime on Alexa. And customers received millions of doorbell and motion announcements via Alexa this holiday season.
Should we be concerned, people? Can we do anything for ourselves anymore? Of course we can, but why would we when we have Alexa, right?
Image: Giphy.
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