The holiday season is usually that time of the year when see record-breaking device activations and app installs, especially on Christmas. This year was no exception, and we’ve seen a decent number of device activations from various manufacturers, as well as app installs.
During the 2015 holiday season, Apple continues to lead the charts with 49.1 percent new device activations despite a 2.2 percent drop year-on-year, according to Flurry, now a part of the Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite (via VentureBeat). The second spot is maintained by Samsung with 19.8 percent activations, an increase of 2.2 percent compared to 2014.
Despite the launch of the new flagship devices, the Lumia 950 and the Lumia 950 XL, as well as the budget-friendly Lumia 550, Microsoft has seen a dip in the device activations for this year. The figure resides at a mere 2 percent, down from 5.8 percent last year, which is not at all a good news for the company.
Other manufacturers who managed to make it to the top five vendors include LG and Xiaomi. Sony fell out from the top five manufacturers list, but it’s interesting to see Xiaomi coming in the list. The Chinese firm is gaining popularity, especially in developing markets, and have managed to enter the top smartphone vendors globally, thanks to its competitive pricing and decent specifications on the handsets.
Another interesting things to note from Flurry’s research is how phablets are becoming popular. The market research firm Flurry tracked over 780,000 apps last week, and concluded that 27 percent of new devices activated during the holiday season are phablets, up from 13 percent last year. It seems people are now preferring big screen devices, but this year, it came at an expense of the small screen phones. Small screen phones with screen size of less than 3.5-inch are now becoming obsolete as people want a bigger form factor when it comes to smartphones.
