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Apple's iPhone and iPad lead holiday device activations (AAPL)
BI Intelligence
Apple’s iPhone and iPad led in device activations during the week leading up to Christmas 2017, according to a new report from Flurry Analytics.
During the holiday lead-up, iPhones and iPads accounted for 44% of all mobile device activations globally, remaining unchanged over the 2016 holiday season. Samsung came in second, accounting for 26% of device activations during the 2017 holiday week, up from 22% over the same period in 2016.
The findings from Flurry indicate that Apple’s expansion of its product line is working. Apple device activations over the holiday spanned 10 different iPhone models, from the 2014 iPhone 6 and the newly released iPhone X, with ~15% of total iPhone activations each.
While it used to be rare for Apple to have any more than two to three iPhones available at any given time, over the past four years the tech giant has expanded its smartphone lineup with screen variations and lower-cost products, and has continued to support older devices. The intended goal of this effort was to expand Apple’s footprint both domestically and in international markets among consumers who are more price sensitive to the high sticker price of Apple’s newest models.
The report findings also indicate that the popularity of large-screened smartphones, called phablets, is accelerating.
Phablets are becoming more popular as large screens become a staple of premium devices. Phablets, or smartphones with a screen size measuring between 5 inches and 6.9 inches, accounted for 53% of device activations during the holiday period. 2017 marks the first year that phablets accounted for more than half of all device activations, and represents a considerable shift from the 2016 holiday season, when just 37% of device activations were phablets (see chart, below).
Phablet-sized smartphones continue to grow at the expense of all other form factors. As the share of phablet-sized devices picked up 16 percentage points from 2016 to 2017, the share of device activations for large tablets, small tablets, and medium-sized smartphones all declined. Medium-sized phablets took the hardest hit, dropping from 45% of all activations during the 2016 holiday season to just 35% this year.
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