Phablets See Jump in Popularity This Holiday Season

For the past few years now, smartphones and tablets have been among the most popular Christmas gifts around the world. Flurry Analytics examined data across more than 600,000 apps to determine which devices were particularly popular this holiday season. Since Christmas day typically sees the highest number of new device activations each year, it seems like a good metric to make out trends in consumer preferences.

According to Flurry's data, Apple is the big winner this holiday season. Not only was the iPhone 6 the single most popular device under the Christmas tree, but Apple devices accounted for 51% of all new device activations between December 19 and 25. The iPhone 6+, Apple's first venture into the phablet market, was also among the Top 5 devices and contributed to the jump in popularity that phablets saw this year.

Phablets accounted for 13 percent of new device activations this holiday season, up from 4 percent during the same period in 2013. The phablet’s surge in popularity seems to come at the expense of tablets, which saw their share of device activations crash from 17 percent in 2013 to just 11 percent in 2014. As smartphones are becoming larger and more powerful, tablet vendors are having more and more problems to convince consumers of the added value a tablet can provide.