Apple dominates holiday sales -- by a lot
It's official: Apple won Christmas.
A report released by Flurry Analytics found that more than 51 percent of all new devices activated in the week leading up to Christmas were iPads or iPhones.
The second place finishers were very far behind, with Samsung accounting for less than 18 percent of devices activations, and Nokia (Microsoft), Sony and LG coming in at a combined 8.8 percent.
For every one new Samsung device, there were 2.9 from Apple. For every Microsoft Lumia, 8.8 iOS machines.
The Christmas surge capped off a banner quarter for Apple. As Huffington Post tech reporter Tim Stenovec told CBS News, the company posted a record quarter, a majority of which had elapsed before the phenomenal release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Some analysts expect that sales of the phones will double this quarter.
"They waited so long to come out with a bigger screen and people just love these bigger screen devices," said Stenovec.
And people are unlikely to jump from Apple to Android (and even less so Windows) because once they're in the ecosystem and used to the user interface, they don't typically leave. "It's a very sticky platform," Stenovec said.
Flurry forecasts more strong performance for iOS devices of all sizes, "and a continued shift to the once-derided phablet form factor."
Medium phones made up by far the greatest percentage of new devices this holiday season (64 percent), but phablets are finally making a significant dent. While in 2012 and 2013, sales of small and regular sized tablets were each three to five times greater than phablet sales, in 2014, phablets outsold both categories by 2 percent.
In fact, Flurry reported that the phablet-sized iPhone 6 Plus was one of the top five most popular new devices.