Phablets most popular Android device for Christmas

Phablets were big sellers in the holiday season, according to data from Yahoo’s Flurry Insights. Flurry tracked the activity of 780,000 apps to see what kinds of devices they were being installed on. Apple was king again with 49.1 percent of activations happening on iOS devices. No other single manufacturer came close to Apple’s numbers. Of course, Android remains very popular as the only viable alternative smartphone operating system, and it turns out that among Android users, phablets were the most popular devices for Christmas.

Half of new Android devices activated in the week leading up to Christmas—from December 19 to 25—were phablets and 35 percent were medium-sized phones. The distribution for all operating systems was 54 percent medium-sized phones and 27 percent phablets. In 2014, only 13 percent of new devices were phablets in the same time period and 63 percent were medium-sized phones.

The week of Christmas is a pretty narrow lens through which to gauge trends, but it does give a look at what kinds of devices people are requesting. This might signal the kinds of gadgets younger people are interested in. Whatever is happening in the market more broadly, it is clear that phablets are becoming more popular as tablets decline in demand. The tablet market has faced decreasing growth with the exception of two-in-one tablet/laptop hybrids. Those have been cannibalizing tablet sales at one end of the market while phablets have been dismantling sales at the other end on back of consumers deciding to forgo a tablet once they have a phone with a 5.5in screen or larger. Flurry points out that phablets have really been hurting sales of smaller phones rather than tablets, but sales of the latter have not rebounded and the market is still undergoing an identity crisis as many manufacturers try to make either the perfect hybrid (Microsoft, Apple, Google) or the perfect media consumption device (Amazon).

The phablet form factor first gained popularity in Asia, especially in Korea thanks to a push by Samsung to differentiate itself from the competition. Many manufacturers have since jumped on the bandwagon and even Apple now has the 5.5in iPhone 6s Plus. China’s Xiaomi has also taken the “Note” namefrom Samsung to make its own phablets, and many China suppliers these days will follow the company’s lead, though the latter is usually following trends already in motion rather than starting them. A search on Global Sources also reveals that manufacturers are increasingly comfortable with the awkward “phablet” label.