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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) appears to have had a very merry Christmas. Recently released reports from research firm Flurry have found that devices made by Apple accounted for 51 percent of all device activations during the week of Christmas (Dec. 19-25). Flurry’s report was compiled from data that tracked which mobile operating system’s version of popular apps like Instagram and Facebook were downloaded during the time period. Flurry currently provides analytics covering nearly 600,000 mobile apps to around 190,000 companies.
Rivals Samsung, Microsoft and Nokia have been trying to shake Apple’s dominant position in the technology market, but their efforts have apparently had limited results. Samsung was revealed to be in second place with an 18 percent share of Christmas week activations. Nokia was reportedly in third place with 6 percent and Microsoft was fifth with a 5 percent share. Sony and LG each had less than 2 percent.
Many consumers focused on Apple devices for their holiday gift giving. Two new iPhone models were released earlier this year with larger screens and updated features, which resounded strongly with consumers around the world. While the sales of smartphones with large screens increased nearly 10 percent over the same time period last year, sales of tablets fell nearly 6 percent. The report from Flurry also disclosed that during the first three weeks of December, consumers installed 2.5 times more apps than on an average day.
In its fourth fiscal quarter this year, Apple amazed investors by posting earnings of $8.5 billion on $42.1 billion in revenue. This translated to about $1.42 a share in earnings. The September launches of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and the strong sales that followed greatly benefited Apple’s bottom line. Apple sold a record 39.3 million devices in the quarter, with 10 million units in the first weekend alone. This quarter, Wall Street expectations are for Apple to sell between 67 and 70 million iPhones. If Apple meets this goal, it would be a 37 percent increase over the number of iPhones sold in the same quarter last year.
