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Amazon's sales soar
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December 27, 2000: 5:56 p.m. ET
Online retailing leader says it shipped 31 million units this holiday season
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - During what turned out to be a disappointing period for its brick-and-mortar counterparts, online retailing leader Amazon.com on Wednesday said it is happy with how the holiday shopping season turned out.
The company said it took more than 31 million orders through its Web sites between Nov. 2 and Dec. 23, the vast majority of which were shipped in time for the holidays.
"We are very pleased with how the holidays went," said Amazon spokesman Justin Osmen. "We saw good growth across all the different platforms."
 The 31 million units, as measured by Amazon's "Delight-O-Meter," which tracks the number of orders from its Web sites worldwide, includes items ordered from its co-branded site with Toysrus.com
It excludes gift-certificate purchases; items ordered from other members of the Amazon commerce network; and orders from Amazon.com's zShops, auctions or marketplace.
Of all the 31 million orders taken during the period, more than 99 percent were shipped in time to arrive for the holidays, Osmen said. The final orders requesting delivery by Dec. 25 were placed up until 11:59 p.m. PST on the 23rd and were shipped to all parts of the U.S. in time to meet the holiday deadline, he said.
Some of the most popular products this year included the Polaroid i-zone camera and i-zone film; "The Gladiator" DVD; the "Chicken Run" video; the Beatles 1 CD; the Tekno Robotic Puppy; DVD players; digital cameras; the George Foreman Champ Grill; and the Nokia 8260 mobile phone.
 During the same period last year, Osmen said unit shipments of orders taken through Amazon's Web sites totaled 20 million.
For traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, the slowing U.S. economy made for a disappointing holiday season.
Already, companies including Federated (FD: Research, Estimates), the parent of Macy's and Bloomingdale's; and No. 1 retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT: Research, Estimates) have told investors to expect fourth-quarter sales to be below their previous expectations.
At the same time, online sales nearly doubled this year as sales began to soar in early November and continued strongly throughout the remainder of the holiday season. A study released Tuesday by investment bank Goldman Sachs and Web research firm PC Data showed Internet spending between the first week in November through the week of Dec. 17 totaled $8.7 billion, up from $4.2 billion during the same period last year.
In addition to Amazon, Internet companies including Bluelight.com -- Kmart's e-commerce arm -- and Yahoo! have recently indicated a strong holiday selling season.
Amazon shares (AMZN: Research, Estimates), which have fallen from a high of $91.50 this year, ended Wednesday's session 6 cents lower at $16.88. 
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