Amazon (AMZN – Analyst Report), no doubt, has been an investors’ darling since the start of the year. The stock more than doubled in the year-to-date frame and is the best performing stock on Nasdaq, close behind Netflix (NFLX). In fact, the e-commerce giant joined the $300 billion club this month and hit an all-time high of $657.00 on November 5.

Incredible performance was credited to the earnings beat streak over four consecutive quarters as well as the company’s profitable cloud-computing business –– Amazon Web Services.

Quick Recap of Q3 Earnings

The company delivered a surprise of 270% for earnings and 2.04% for revenues. From a year-over-year look, earnings per share narrowed from a loss of 95 cents and revenues climbed 23% matching the company’s biggest growth in two years (read: Amazing Q3 at Amazon: ETFs to Benefit).

The online e-commerce behemoth forecast a record holiday season with revenue growth of 14–25% for the fourth quarter. This translates into total revenue of $33.5–$36.8 billion for the quarter, the high end of which is above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $35.97.

What’s in Store for the Holiday Season?

As Amazon is looking to increase its revenue by as much as 25% in the holiday quarter, it kicked off its Black Friday deals three weeks ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season by launching a dedicated Black Friday Deals Store. The company is giving huge discounts on a wide array of products ranging from TVs, smartphones, cameras, projectors, toys to clothes.

The company also doubled the number of limited-time ‘lightning deals’ to 30,000 on its e-commerce platform and offers Prime members access to these deals 30 minutes earlier. Notably, the 7-week holiday sales already started on Monday and will run through December 22.

The leading online retailer has some interesting deals that could provide it an edge over its major rivals like Apple (AAPL – Analyst Report). In particular, the company’s new 7-inch Fire tablet for just $49.99 would help it to catch up with the Apple’s iPad. Apart from these, Amazon is hiring 100,000 workers, up 25% from the last year, to meet the increase in customer demand during the holiday season. With this, the company is exceeding the holiday hiring practices of its rivals Macy’s (M – Analyst Report), Target (TGT – Analyst Report) and Wal-Mart (WMT – Analyst Report).

Moreover, Amazon is expected to be the clear winner this holiday season mostly on the back of online sales. As per the Adobe forecast, online holiday sales are expected to hit an all-time high of $83 billion, up 11% year over year and Amazon will continue to dominate the U.S. e-commerce industry. (read: Amazon ETFs to Buy on Holiday Optimism in India).