In brief: Amazon announced Wednesday that it smashed all previous holiday sales records including new subscribers to Amazon Prime. In its year's end report the company claims it shipped out over a billion orders this year.

In an almost identical announcement as last year, Amazon reports that "tens of millions" have signed up for both paid and trial Amazon Prime subscriptions this year. It also said that it had sold more Amazon devices like the Ring Video Doorbell 2, Echo Dot, and Fire TV Stick than ever before.

Its claims are supported by previous observations this year. For example, TechCrunch noted that just on Black Friday 2018 alone, the Echo Dot was not just the number-one selling Amazon product, but it was the biggest seller out of any other manufacturers as well. The day was also its biggest single selling day in company history.

If that were not enough, a record number of people took advantage of Prime's free same-day, one-day, and two-hour (with Prime Now) shipping. This number was spurred on by the record number of new subscribers

Hundreds of millions of shipments went out worldwide over the holiday shopping season, said Amazon's press release. Some of the most popular items included the LOL Surprise! Glam Glitter Dolls, fashion items from Carhartt, and Bose QuietComfort Wireless Headphones.

"Small and medium-sized businesses had their best holiday season ever in our stores, with items sold growing at a faster rate than retail - more than 50 percent of items sold in our stores this holiday season came from small and medium-sized businesses."

"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," said Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer. "We are thrilled that in the U.S. alone, more than one billion items shipped for free this holiday with Prime."

In addition to the standard Amazon-branded products offered by the company, millions of "Kids Edition" devices sold as well. The Kids Editions of the Echo Dot and the Fire Tablet both broke previous sales records.

Amazon was not the only winner. Other companies that did well on the platform include Blink and iRobot (Roomba). Samsung's Flat 65" 4K UHD 8 Series Smart LED TV was a best seller as was Apple's iPad (Wi-Fi, 32GB) in Space Gray.

Amazon did not release any sales figures, but with over a billion shipments worldwide, the numbers are going to be huge.