Tech and gadgets are popular gifts over the holiday period and the season usually gives a good indication as to what products are proving popular. Analytics firm Flurry examines new device activations in order to gauge which mobile devices are being unwrapped as Christmas presents and, this year, it was easy to see that there was one clear winner: Apple.
It’s clear that Santa is no longer into cookies – he prefers Apples. It was a banner Christmas for the Apple, the company that started the mobile revolution with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007. Seven years later, Apple accounted for 51% of the new device activations worldwide Flurry recognized in the week leading up to and including Christmas Day (December 19th – 25th).
Products from the the Cupertino company appeared to be significantly more popular than competing products, accounting for 51.3% of mobile device activations worldwide. Flurry reports that the iPhone 6 was the most activated device with the iPhone 6 Plus also featuring in the top 5.
By comparison, as shown in the chart below, Samsung claimed 17.7% of activations with Nokia and Sony gaining 5.8% and 1.6%, respectively.
Interestingly, HTC, Xiaomi and Huawei do not feature, each claiming less than 1% share according to Flurry’s data. One possible reason might be the brands’ popularity in Asian markets where Christmas is not the biggest gift-giving season.
To put the data in perspective, Flurry explains that for every Samsung device activated, there were 2.9 iOS devices activated.
While Flurry does not define the term activations in explicit terms, the company primarily analyses app data so it is likely the company was using the number of new devices registered with the appropriate app stores rather than activations with carriers.
Another notable insight from Flurry’s data is the shifting tastes in terms of device form factors. Small and full-sized tablet declined while phablets jumped steeply — up from 4% in 2013 to 13% in 2014 — thanks in large part to Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus.
As for app installs, all these new mobile devices of course caused a surge in downloads. On Christmas Day, Flurry tracked 2.5x the amount of app installs as compared to an average day in December with games and messaging apps proving the most popular.
