Amazon's Prime Day Sale Outperforms Black Friday

Despite some criticism about the available deals, Amazon's special Prime Day sales event--meant to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary--was a big success. The online retail behemoth announced on Thursday that it sold more total items on Prime Day, July 15, than its biggest Black Friday on record.

Shoppers bought a total of 34.4 million items on Prime Day, which is 18 percent more than Black Friday 2014. This is a particularly noteworthy achievement, considering the savings were available only to Prime members, who pay $99/year for a subscription.

According to Amazon's internal data, the retailer sold 398 items per second, while total worldwide orders rose 266 percent over July 15, 2014. Of course, a significant year-on-year rise was to be expected considering the significant push Amazon made relative to last year.

It's also not very surprising to learn that Amazon plans to hold another Prime Day next year.

"Going into this, we weren't sure whether Prime Day would be a one-time thing or if it would become an annual event," Amazon said in a statement. "After yesterday's results, we'll definitely be doing this again."

Amazon also noted that July 15 saw "more new members try Prime worldwide than any single day in Amazon history."

Below are some Prime Day highlights for the US and worldwide.

Prime Day highlights from the US:

• Members ordered tens of thousands of Fire TV Sticks in one hour, making it the fastest-selling deal on an Amazon device ever
• Fire tablet sales on Amazon exceeded sales on Black Friday last year
• Members ordered thousands of e-readers and thousands of Echos in just 15 minutes
• 56,000 Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy sets
• 47,000 Televisions sold, which was 1300% year-over-year growth
• 41,000 Bose Headphones, compared to 8 the previous Wednesday
• 28,000 Rubbermaid 42-Piece Easy Find Lid Food Storage Sets, compared to 428 the previous Wednesday
• 24,000 Instant Pot 7-in-1 Programmable Pressure Cookers, compared to 182 the previous Wednesday
• 14,000 iRobot Roomba 595 Pet Vacuum Cleaning Robots, compared to 1 the previous Wednesday
• 12,000 Fifty Shades of Grey Unrated Edition on Blu-ray, compared to 121 the previous Wednesday
• 10,000 Meguiar's X2020 Supreme Shine Microfiber Towels, compared to 244 the previous Wednesday

Prime Day global top-sellers:

• US: Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy
• UK: Lenovo FLEX 10 10.1-inch Multimode Touchscreen Notebook
• Spain: SSD Drive
• Japan: Green Smoothie mix
• Italy: Logitech Keyboard
• Germany: Croc Sandals
• France: Monopoly Boardgame
• Canada: Huggies Diapers
• Austria: Croc Sandals