Amazon calls 2016 holiday season its best ever; shares rise The Amazon Echo home assistant and its smaller version, Echo Dot, topped the best-sellers list, said Jeff Wilke, chief executive of Amazon's worldwide consumer division, in a press release. "Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still had trouble keeping them in stock," he said. Sales of voice-controlled Echo devices were nine times more than they were during last year's holiday season, the company said. Amazon did not disclose comparable sales figures from a year earlier. "It's all relative to other numbers that they've never told us," said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research. Amazon likely sold between 4 million and 5 million devices this year to date with Alexa, the voice-controlled assistant on the Echo, estimated Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy in a research note. Shoppers can command the Echo to perform a host of tasks, from playing music to turning on Christmas lig...