The Christmas gifts have been exchanged, the Chanukah ones are being given this week and it looks like Apple is leading the pack in terms of smartphone activations for the 2016 holidays.
This year, 44% of new phone and tablet activations were Apple devices with Samsung seeing 21%. 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. Holding the third and fourth positions for activations are Huawei and LG; which is remarkable, as both manufacturers do not have an individual device within the top 35 devices activated. Their high rank is likely due to the fact that they have wide variety of devices and affordable options (hundreds of phablet and medium phones) for consumers to choose from.
As expected, phablet devices (5″ to 6.9″ devices) continue to chomp away at the medium phone (3″ to 4.9″) market share, although medium phones saw the most activations during the week preceding the holidays. Phablets continue to gain popularity and market share, albeit at the expense of medium phones. Tablet device activations have stabilized and are relatively flat year over year. This indicates that users find purpose for their purchase, albeit the devices cater to more niche use.
As with years past, Christmas Day proved the biggest day for app downloads and the Flurry blog once again tracked twice the app installs on Christmas Day as on an average day in December. Key categories included Messaging & Social, Games, Music, Media, & Entertainment, and Kids & Family apps. Mobile users were catching up with loved ones, entertaining their guess and distracting kids, all on their devices.
If you were able to snag or give someone an awesome device this year, please let us know about it in the comments.
Via the Flurry Blog