Apple Tops 2017 Smartphone Holiday Season Buying List, Google Missing From Chart: Flurry Analytics

Flurry Analytics has released data that shows Apple's prowess in the holiday gifting industry. In the week leading up to Christmas 2017, Apple's iPhone and iPad models secured as much as 44 percent of the total device activations. Samsung came in second at 26 percent and Huawei was ranked third with 5 percent share of device activations.

As per its report, Flurry Analytics has released insights for the most gifted smartphones and tablets in the world. In the week just before Christmas, the report recorded 44 percent of the total sales attributed to Apple devices, a major chunk of which are the iPhone and iPad. Samsung at 26 percent, gained five percent over last year's share owing to the success of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8. Huawei was third with a 5 percent share, while Xiaomi, Motorola, LG, and Oppo took the next four spots with 3 percent share of device activations each. Vivo rounded off the list with a 2 percent share of device activation.

Photo Credit: Flurry Analytics

Among Apple's products, the iPhone 7 led with 15.1 percent sales, followed by the iPhone 6 with 14.9 percent and the newly-launched iPhone X with 14.7 percent. The list also included other popular handsets such as the iPhone 6s, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 8 among others. The relevance of the iPhone 6 on top of this list indicates that cost was a major factor for iPhone buyers this holiday season. A majority ditched the premium iPhone X in favour of the value-for-money iPhone 6.

"This is the first year that Vivo has had significant adoption, which can be attributed to their growth in China and India. Google is once again missing from this chart, despite the fanfare around the launch of the Pixel 2," said the blog post on Flurry's website.

This report also noted that phablet devices (5-6.9 inches) successfully took over medium sized phones (3.5-4.9 inches) in the holiday season with 53 percent of all device activations. This is a massive 16 percent growth over the 37 percent share of phablets reported in 2016. With full screen displays becoming the norm in 2017, phablets were but an obvious choice for the gifting season.