Amazon Has 'Best Ever' Holiday Season

The Grinch apparently didn’t sour shoppers on Amazon this year: The company said today the 2008 holiday season was its “best ever,” MarketWatch reports. Amazon sold more than 6.3 million items worldwide on Dec. 15, its peak day, amounting to “a record-breaking 72.9 items per second.” Last year it sold 5.4 million units on its top day.

Amazon may have benefited from the shortened holiday shopping season, which forced customers to shop more in less time than last year, an analyst noted. Samsung’s 52-inch high-definition television, Apple’s iPod Touch, and the Nintendo Wii were Amazon’s top sellers. Still, total retail sales, excluding automobiles, slipped by 8% this month, in what could be the worst holiday shopping season since 1969. (More Amazon stories.)