It looks like Samsung didn’t make up any lost ground on Apple this holiday season.
In the wake of the South Korean smartphone company’s Galaxy Note 7 debacle and despite a myriad of promotional offers touting the Galaxy S7 that was released in February, Christmas shoppers just weren’t that into Samsung. Their real crush, it seems, was on Apple.
According to a new report from Flurry, a mobile analytics and ad company from Yahoo, Apple absolutely dominated device activations during the week leading up to Christmas and the start of Hanukkah, raking in more than two activations to each one on a Samsung device.
Flurry’s data, which is gathered through its global database via the company’s SDK in apps, indicated Apple devices accounted for 44 percent of device activations by manufacturer, while Samsung accounted for just 21 percent. Huawei trailed in a distant third with 3 percent while LG, Amazon, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Motorola followed with 2 percent each.
Flurry said “activations” represent the number of new phones added to its database during the period from December 19-25. A company spokeswoman said Flurry supports nearly a quarter million developers and reaches more than 800,000 apps across more than 2 billion devices.
Interestingly, Apple’s figure was down from nearly half (49.1 percent) of all device activations last year during its iPhone 6s cycle, despite the launch of the iPhone 7 this fall. By contrast, Samsung gained little more than 1 percent in 2016 over its 19.8 percent of activations in 2015.
Another notable shift can be seen in the mix of companies that trail the two giants, which changed significantly in the one-year period to reflect the rise of up and coming Chinese smartphone manufacturers. In 2015, the three companies with the most smartphone activations behind Apple and Samsung were Nokia (2 percent), LG (1.7 percent), and Xiaomi (1.5 percent). In 2016, Nokia dropped out of the mix altogether, to be replaced by Huawei in third and quickly growing Chinese companies Oppo and Xiaomi in a larger tie for fourth.
Despite experiencing a 112 percent sales boost around Black Friday last month, notably absent from the Christmas list was Google, which launched its Pixel smartphone back in October. Flurry said the Pixel didn’t register within the top 25 devices activated globally over the holiday.
“With only two devices, the Pixel and Pixel XL, and mixed market reception, Google struggled to drum up excitement this holiday season,” Flurry Director Chris Klotzbach and Marketing and Analytics Manager Lali Kesiraju wrote in a blog post.
Flurry’s data indicated medium phones between 3.5 inches and 4.9 inches saw highest percentage of activations (45 percent) during the period, but lost share to phablets, which were close behind with 37 percent. The latter figure was up from 27 percent for phablets last year while medium phone activations were down from 54 percent in 2015. The data showed full-size tablet activations held steady at 9 percent.
