Apple benefits from the growing phablet market
The Apple of your eye: Outlook good for Apple earnings report (Part 4 of 12)
Phablet market growing fast
Smartphones with screen sizes of between 5 and 6.9 inches are popularly known as phablets. The Apple (AAPL) iPhone 6 iPhone 6 Plus is a 5.5-inch smartphone and clearly lies in the phablet category. And, the 4.7-inch screen size of the iPhone 6 also comes pretty close to the phablet market range.
According to a report from Flurry Analytics, Christmas 2014 saw a big jump in the number of phablets activated. In the week leading up to Christmas, 13% of new device activations were phablets, compared to just 4% in 2013. The Flurry report also says that the iPhone 6 Plus was one of the top five devices activated at Christmas, and the iPhone 6 was number one.
Big market share gains likely since release of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus
This is one of the primary reasons why Apple gained substantial share in the US smartphone market after iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were released. According to a report from Kantar Worldpanel, and as the chart above shows, Apple iOS operating system’s share of the market increased from 30% in August 2014 to 47% in November.
This gain seemed to have come at the expense of Google’s (GOOG)(GOOGL) Android operating system. Android’s share declined from 64% to 48% during the same time period. Microsoft (MSFT) Windows and BlackBerry (BBRY) also continued to lose market share.
Apple likely gained even more market share in the month of December, as suggested by the Flurry report, which states that Christmas 2014 saw a big jump in the number of phablets activated.
Clearly, people are loving the bigger-sized iPhones, which is why we’re seeing such large market share gains by Apple since the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were released.
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