The Christmas holiday was a productive one for Apple. From Dec. 19 through Dec. 25, Apple iOS devices accounted for 49% of all device activations, according to data from an analytics firm.
But its not all good news for Apple. The company was down overall from last year’s 51.3% market share over the same time period, according to the report by Flurry. Samsung came in second place in this year’s study with a 19.8% share of new activations. It is still unknown as to how these numbers actually translate to revenue as they are just market share numbers at this point. We won’t know for sure if Apple really dominated until it releases financial results.
As far as distribution of the operating system activations over different devices, iOS dominated the medium-sized phone market, which includes the recently launched iPhone 6s, with a 65% share, leaving Google’s Android with most of the remaining 35%. The good news for Android is they owned Apple in the phablet market with a 50% share to iOS’s 12%.
More good news for Android is the study showed phablets gained the most ground in overall market share across varying form factors. The large-screened phone/tablet hybrid more than doubled its share from 13% last year to 27% this year. Medium-sized phones continued to make up the largest share of the market, but that share is decreasing. The market went from 63% last year to 54% this year. Every other type of device, which includes full-sized tablets, small tablets and small phones, also lost market share. These numbers are not company specific.