Amazon’s $30 Echo Dot found its way under a lot of Christmas trees this year—so many, it seems, that Amazon’s Alexa app reached the top of the App Store charts this weekend for the first time. (Unsurprisingly, it’s also at the top of the most popular apps list in the Google Play Store, which serves Android devices.)
The Alexa app is used to control Alexa-enabled devices like the Echo, Echo Show, Echo Dot, and Echo Sport. Amazon says that the inexpensive Echo Dot was its best-selling product throughout the entire holiday season, across all manufacturers and categories. It hasn’t released exact sales number for the device but says “millions” were sold.
Alexa devices were so popular this year in fact that the Echo Dot, Echo Spot, and Echo Buttons actually sold out. Customers can currently place their names on a pre-order list to receive them when supplies are replenished.
This year’s bump in the App Store charts confirms reports that the device is increasing in popularity. Last Christmas the app only reached the No. 4 spot in the charts, reports TechCrunch.
While it was a big year for people to receive an Alexa-powered device as a gift, it was also a big year for people to use the devices they already owned. Amazon says that customers asked Alexa for cooking-related advice nine times more this year than they did in 2016. Alexa also helped people mix “tens of thousands of cocktails” with the most-requested recipes being for a Martini and a Manhattan. People used Alexa to listen to music three times as much this holiday season as they did at the same time last year. (The most requested song? “Jingle Bells,” naturally.)
And the most common person that people called this year using an Alexa-enabled device? The one person in the family who probably has even better advice than an artificially intelligent being: Mom.
