Research conducted over the holidays indicates that the number of iPhones activated was double that of Samsung smartphones. While Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) claimed 44% of new phone activations, Samsung had 21%. This was according to Flurry, a firm that specializes in mobile app analytics.
“While Samsung is slowly growing in popularity throughout the holiday season, up 1% from last year, Apple devices continue to be the gift to give,” said Flurry in its research report.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) out
Compared to last year, though, Apple’s share of device activations dropped from 49.1% while Samsung gained from 19.8%. Following Apple and Samsung in device activations were Xiaomi, Huawei, LG, Oppo, and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). Pixel, a phone by Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) that was launched in October did not make it to the list.
Microsoft also fell out of the list as Huawei made its debut. The fact that the smartphone brands from Asia were ranked lower in device activations in the period between December 19 and December 25 should not be misconstrued to mean the situation holds throughout the year. This is because gift-giving around Christmas is not as big in the region as it is in the West.
In terms of the kinds of devices activated, the popularity of phablets continued to rise. During the pre-Christmas week, phablets comprised about 37% of the devices activated which was an increase of 10% from last year. This popularity of phablets came at the expense of smaller phones.
Flurry of activity
While the research conducted by Flurry is global, it is skewed naturally to users of its platform. The advertising and mobile analytics firm which is owned by Yahoo has a reach of over 800,000 apps in more than 2 billion mobile devices daily. Combined with the 250,000 developers it supports, this is how the analytics firm is able to tell which brand of devices was bought and which particular apps were the most popular.
In Tuesday’s trading session, shares of Apple rose by 0.64% to close the day at $117.26 a piece.