Three million people signed up for Amazon Prime before Christmas

Thanks to Amazon’s notorious secrecy regarding certain aspects of its business, we’re still not sure how many people are subscribed to Amazon Prime, but the company decided to give us an idea of how popular it is on Sunday. According to the company, more than three million people signed up for Amazon Prime in the week before Christmas, and while that does include temporary subscribers who only used the one-month free trial, that number is still impressive.

Amazon is a company famous for press releases that are devoid of actual information. But, in a moment of selective truth-telling, the company just revealed that it signed up over three million members for its Prime program during the week before Christmas. There are caveats, of course, as ever. Amazon confirmed to Geekwire that this figure refers to new trial and paying members. So the actual number retained as ongoing, paying members may prove to be lower. The company just gave a figure for the third week of December — which, in case you forgot, is right before Christmas falls — so we’re unable to gauge how much more popular the service was than a more normal week. Offering free shipping is clearly most appealing during last-minute Christmas shopping time. And finally, in typical Amazon fashion, there is no word on the total number of subscribers that the service has, although it was apparently a “record-breaking holiday season.”