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Amazon devices hit record sales despite recent reports of confusion at its hardware division

Eugene Kim   

Amazon devices hit record sales despite recent reports of confusion at its hardware division
Retail2 min read

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Mario Tama/Getty Images

Amazon announced on Tuesday that it had the best sales weekend ever for its consumer devices over the Black Friday weekend, despite recent reports of confusion at its hardware unit.

The best selling products were the 7-inch Fire tablet and the Fire TV streaming device, each seeing a 6x and 3x bump in sales, respectively, compared to the same period of last year.

The company added that the Fire TV was the top selling streaming media player across all US retailers in the three-month period from July through October.

On top of that, Amazon's Echo personal assistant device is proving to be a massive success too, as it was the top selling $100-plus product on Amazon.com, it said.

"This has already been the biggest holiday shopping season for Amazon devices, and we're energized by the year over year growth for all of our product categories," Dave Limp, Senior Vice President, Amazon Devices, said in a statement.

In typical Amazon fashion, the company didn't disclose specific numbers for its sales, so it's hard to tell exactly how well these devices have been selling overall. But regardless, it's an encouraging sign for Amazon's hardware division called Lab126, which was reported to be experiencing lower morale and confusion over priorities after the Fire Phone flop in a recent WSJ report.

The report said in August that Lab126 had laid off dozens of employees, mostly the ones who worked on the Fire Phone, but the lack of focus and "shifting, and, at times, enigmatic priorities" had led to frustration internally.

But that didn't seem to slow down Amazon's hardware ambitions as the company made its device business the focal point of its most recent earnings release. During a press call held after earnings, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky hinted that the Fire tablets were selling extremely well, saying, "We're really excited about the response, we're going to be building millions more of the Fire tablets than we had originally planned."

Still, there's some questions around Amazon's claim to the Fire TV being the most popular streaming device in the US. According to research group Strategy Analytics, Google Chromecast was the top-selling streaming device in the past year, followed by Apple TV, while Amazon's Fire TV and Roku came in at third place.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

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