The iPhone Stuffed More Stockings This Christmas Than Other Models/Brands
In the battle for smart phone supremacy this holiday season, the Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus was crowned the king by the Flurry Christmas sales report.
Flurry tracked actual cell phone activations in the United States on Christmas Day (don't they ever rest?). More than 51 percent of new devices activated on the day to be most merry were iPhones. Samsung grabbed just over 17 percent of the market in activations on the same day and a surprisingly good 5.8 percent showing from Nokia (now known as Lumia).
Chinese Brands Not Doing So Well In The USA Yet
HTC, and the less established Huawei and Xiaomi only received about 1 million unit activations per brand on Christmas Day but this is not too surprisingly because their main markets are in China and the rest of SE Asia.
Flurry Data from 600,000 Apps
Flurry collects data from 600,000 active apps which helps to identify when a new unit has been activated and app market where the app originated helps to confirm which manufacturer was involved. The iPhone 6 was the most popular handset, but the “phablet” sized iPhone 6 Plus was also pretty popular on the day.
Phablet Over-sized Phones Selling Well As Gifts
The “phablet” market continues to support the manufacture of larger sized phones with a 13 percent share of activations on Christmas Day up from just 4 percent the year before. This is also encouraging for buyers of larger smart phones because Christmas Day activations suggest a gift and “phablets” are not the cheapest phones to send as a gift suggesting the “phablets” actually normally have a greater market share. Juniper Research suggested earlier in 2013 that by 2018 the “phablet” market will reach 120 million units sold.
Tablet sales continue to noticeably slow down with larger and larger smart phone handsets becoming available at more affordable prices. Smaller handset sales fell in US markets at Christmas suggesting that buyers are opting more and more for larger screen sizes.
App downloads and installations on Christmas Day strained the internet access all day with 2.5 times the usual number of app installs happening on December 25th. Games and messaging apps were the most popular downloads.
