Apple Vs. Android: Who Leads The Phablet Race?

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Another holiday season, another boost for new smart device activations and app downloads.

According to analytics vendor Flurry, 2015 saw record-breaking results and also solidified the popularity of the well-known phablet.

Nearly 27 percent of new devices purchased in the week leading up to Christmas were phablets, underpinning the continued shift consumers are taking toward devices with larger screens.

“In the early days, it appeared that phablets were stealing share from tablets, with tablet share decreasing from 17 percent in 2013 to 11 percent in 2014,” Jarah Euston, VP of growth of Flurry for Yahoo, explained in a blog post discussing the company’s annual results. “For the first time in 2015, though, it appears consumers are opting for phablets, not instead of a tablet but instead of a smaller-sized phone.”

While Apple’s phablets represented a 12 percent share of all the company’s devices activated during Christmas week, data from Flurry found that, for the first time, phablets made up half of all Android devices sold during the same timeframe.

“The popularity of the Samsung Galaxy Note and its imitators have changed the Android game, especially in Asian markets,” Euston added.

But Apple still led the pack in overall holiday sales.

When looking at which mobile device manufacturers sold the most during this year’s holiday season, 49.1 percent of all new devices sold were from Apple, while Samsung came in at 19.8 percent and Microsoft only held 2 percent.