Apple continues to dominate smart device holiday sales

“Christmas is traditionally the biggest day of the year for new smart-device activations and app downloads, and 2015 was no exception, with new device activations and app installs shattering record after record,” Jarah Euston reports for Flurry. “As we do every year, Flurry examined what was waiting under the Christmas tree last week, based on the 780,000 apps we track.”

“Back in 2013, only 4% of new device activations during the week leading up to Christmas were phablets. Fast forward two years and a whopping 27% of all new devices were phablets. That’s doubling share in only 12 months!” Euston reports. “In the early days it appeared that phablets were stealing share from tablets, with tablet share decreasing from 17% in 2013 to 11% 2014. For the first time in 2015 though, it appears consumers are opting for phablets- not instead of a tablet- but instead of a smaller-sized phone. Meanwhile, small phones with a screen size less than 3.5” are nearly extinct.”

“We next examined which manufacturers were winning the holiday shopping battle. Apple again took the top spot, with 49.1% of all new devices down 2.2 percentage points from 51.3% last year. Samsung clocked in at 19.8%, up 2.1% from to 17.7% in 2014, driven by the new Galaxy Grand Prime, Core Prime, and S6,” Euston reports. “Microsoft’s Nokia lost share from 2014, dropping from 5.8% to 2%. Sony fell out of the top five manufacturers all together, while Xiaomi made the cut for the first time with 1.5% of all new activations during Christmas week.”

Flurry: Top 5 Device Activations by Manufacturer, Dec. 19-25, 2015

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Domination.

19 Comments

    1. The analysts are way beyond this year as they’re already into the middle of 2016 where they see Apple dead in the water and that’s why Apple’s stock value is in the toilet. They don’t even care if Apple has record holiday sales. They’ve already decided the stock is heading to $100 a share for Q1 quarterly earnings and Tim Cook will simply laugh it off as he usually does.

      1. Who gives a fuck about what they think?

        These are the same guys who never saw the meltdown coming and told everyone to buy junk derivatives by the truckload.

        These are the same people who lost half the nation their savings amd will continue to lead anyone who listens to them, to their ruin.

        If they had a clue and knew what they were talking about they would long be retired rather then prostituting their sorry asses.

        1. Remember, these folks make their money by churning the stock with brokers fees. They’re not stupid. I fear when their income is in conflict with their ethics, the income will win.

          That means to take a solid company like Apple, which is virtually guaranteed to continue generating substantial revenue for many years, and publish reports designed to get their clients to either buy or sell the stock dependent upon their holdings, likely telling different clients a positively or a negatively inclined story to get them to place an order and generate a brokers transaction fee.

        2. And when facts don’t matter to a stupid population and nation of idiots, you get ignoramuses like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin harnessing the ignorance and Idiocracy…

          Reap what you sow and don’t forget to weep.

  1. As opposed to last year, there is a reason to go physically go to the Apple store and get on the iPhone Upgrade Program. We did the RESERVE A PHONE to buy in store and 1 out of 3 picked up their phone over the weekend, and 2 still need to get their iPhones, so I can easily conclude that the decline in Apple activations YOY is a misleading statistic because there was no iPhone Upgrade Program last year. Next year all 6 of us will get the iPhone 7 the week after xmas. Why new every year? The camera!

    1. I just occurred to me that if all those people on the iPhone Upgrade Program turn in their older phones to get new ones at minimal cost, wouldn’t that greatly affect Apple’s revenue for the new model?

  2. Hold on a sec. This is “sales” not “profits”, right?

    I always thought Apple sales were low and profits high. Does this mean we have crossed another milestone where we have higher sales as well as higher profits?

    Hope so.

  3. ‘Back in 2013, only 4% of new device activations during the week leading up to Christmas were phablets. Fast forward two years and a whopping 27% of all new devices were phablets. That’s doubling share in only 12 months!” Euston reports.’

    WAIT A MINUTE!!!
    No wonder the stupid analysts are getting it all wrong…. They don’t even know that two years is 24 months not 12!! And what kind of math makes 27% a doubling of 4%?
    Huh?

  4. “Microsoft’s Nokia lost share from 2014, dropping from 5.8% to 2%.” – Yet Wallstreet is still throwing money at this company hand over fist. Microsoft’s P/E is 37.2, while Apple’s P/E ratio is 11.59. Apple has 49.1% of mobile device activations and Microsoft has 2%. I think the smart people on Wallstreet moved off planet.

  5. To add a grain of salt, the graph doesn’t account for about 26% of ‘other’ device activations which are most likely Android handsets from a huge army (~20+) of smaller manufacturers each at <1.5%. As such though Apple is the manufacturer with the largest number of devices being activated this season, it would be good to remember that iOS may not overwhelmingly be the OS that is being activated on devices.

Reader Feedback

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.