Amazon seizes half of all online Black Friday sales

Amazon is dominating — again.

Black Friday sales and promotions have helped the company claim between 45% and 50% of all online Black Friday sales, according to a new report from GBH Insights. GBH called the results “eye-popping.”

This new number, combined with online sales figure estimates for the same timeframe from other analytics firms, shows Amazon’s sales are well over $1 billion for the last 24 hours or so.

This heralds another blockbuster holiday for Amazon, with estimates that it will take half of all online sales throughout the holiday. It will need to fend off an aggressive Walmart to do so. Walmart has pumped its resources into its new online offerings to make them more competitive and likely had its most ambitious online Black Friday this year.

Still, Amazon Prime subscriber growth — in terms of both numbers and how much they spend — sets Amazon up well for the rest of the year.

“Customers purchased millions of Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices , and Alexa devices were the top sellers across all of Amazon,” David Limp, Amazon’s head of devices, said in a press statement.

The Echo Dot, Amazon’s cheapest device with its voice assistant, Alexa, was Amazon’s best-seller globally across all categories — and it was on sale over the weekend for $30, the cheapest it has ever been.

Other best-sellers included the new Fire TV Stick, the new Amazon Echo, and the Fire 7 tablet, the company said.

The device sales propelled Amazon to a strong Thanksgiving weekend overall.

Amazon accounted for 45% of online transactions among 50 top retailers on Thanksgiving and 55% on Black Friday, an analysis by Hitwise found. As of Monday, Amazon was on track to take about half of all online sales over Thanksgiving weekend, according to research by GBH Insights.

People spent a record $6.59 billion online on Cyber Monday, $5.03 billion on Black Friday, and $2.87 billion on Thanksgiving Day, according to estimates from Adobe Analytics. Given these figures, it’s not hard to make a rough guess about the billions Amazon raked in over the holiday weekend.