Apple Again Tops Holiday Sales With 44% of All New Mobile Device Activations

[Michael Scrip]

Meanwhile:

https://www.phonearena.com/news/Goo...ctivations-this-past-holiday-weekend_id101088

Thanks for the link.

Though if there was ever an article with a confusing or misleading premise... this would be it.

First of all... the data in the bar-graph adds up to 170%... *raises eyebrows*

I had to dig deeper to see why... as there's no way the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL combined could be 70% of activations over Christmas.

Here's what I found:

This info from Localytics is US only.

They looked at activations during the weekend of Christmas... compared to activations from the prior three weekends.

And the charts represent the percentage of change per phone over those two time-periods... not a percentage of overall activations.

They're calling it "lift"

For instance... if an average of 10 Pixel phones were sold during the three prior weekends... and then 13 Pixel phones were sold on Christmas weekend... that's a 30% increase that Localytics is showing on Christmas.

Here's their methodology:

"For this analysis, Localytics examined the percentage increase of new devices in the U.S. on Christmas Weekend, including Christmas Day, to a baseline of the prior three weekends in December (Nov 30th - Dec 4th, Dec 7th - Dec 11th, Dec 14th - Dec 18th)."

So apparently the Pixel phones showed the most percentage growth in sales... but their sales didn't even register in the Flurry data of overall sales.

Good stuff.

 

[Quu]

iPhone 7 out-activated the iPhone X. Now that's interesting.. and this time it's not iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus combined, it's just the iPhone 7 on its own.

 

[Mobster1983]

Yep, this is typical Apple marketing spew (yeah I know it's a third party, but you can easily look at the way the data is presented and see who the bias is toward). If you look at actual sales, Android OS devices outsell Apple something like 19 to 1. It's not even a competition anymore like it was 5 years ago. LOL. The world has spoken and Android is the Windows and iOS is the Mac. It'll always be that way. Apple isn't going anywhere but Android is always going to be the dominant force by far.

Ummm...have you taken math? Apple had 44% of ALL device activations. Even assuming all other devices were Android, that equals 56%. That is pretty damn close to a 1 to 1 ratio, not 19 to 1. In full market share (not just this short time period) Android has about 85% of the market compared to iOS (Apple) 15%. This is LESS than a 6 to 1 ratio.

Here are the facts:

Android is, by far, the most numerous OS worldwide, but not nearly the 19 to 1 ratio you claim.

Apple sells more devices than any other COMPANY during the holidays, the whole point of this article.

Elsewhere, Apple makes the large majority of the PROFIT when it comes to mobile devices, which in the business world is all that really matters.

 

[justperry]

Throttled, or do you have some poorly-behaving apps sucking up CPU cycles? Please provide proof.

It's not that bad yet, 1800 MHz now, been down to 1500 MHz

 

[Michael Scrip]

I have a question...

These analytics firms must know the actual numbers in order to calculate these percentages.

So why do they only give us the percentages? Do they have some obligation to protect these companies?

It's cool that Apple had 44% of all activations in the week leading up to Christmas. But 44% of what?

They're leaving us with more questions... even though they know the answers!

 

[Glideslope]

Can't help but notice again the way the numbers are presented look good for Apple. But in reality, it shows Android activations surpassed Apple if you look at the actual numbers. Does Apple know they can't just manipulate stats into becoming number 1?

They will finally learn from Q1. The Jan Conference Call will be a Religious Experience for Apple. No way to spin this one. 6 years since SJ left us. The end was bound to come eventually.

 

[Archer1440]

It's not that bad yet, 1800 MHz now, been down to 1500 MHz

Why do you think that application is providing an accurate figure?

 

[zipster]

No 5 million per month for the S8 is not good. And really it should not be compared to the iPhone X which is much more expensive. The X is in its own class of smartphone. Just calling the flagship isn't enough. Better to call it something like a super flagship or a luxury flagship. The pixel, iPhone 8 and Galaxy S8 are all in the same class and their sales can justifiably be compared because their per unit price is about the same.

LOL! Maybe in price, but in pure specs, it barely outclasses the 8+.

 

[jerryk]

What a crappy graph and more importantly the statistics behind the graph. What sort of time period is "weeks leading up to Christmas"? How about actual dates?

My guess it is it started on new iPhone launch date and stopped a week before Christmas when people started travelling. Talk about cherry picking numbers.

 

[deanthedev]

Thanks for the link.

Though if there was ever an article with a confusing or misleading premise... this would be it.

First of all... the data in the bar-graph adds up to 170%... *raises eyebrows*

I had to dig deeper to see why... as there's no way the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL combined could be 70% of activations over Christmas.

Here's what I found:

This info from Localytics is US only.

They looked at activations during the weekend of Christmas... compared to activations from the prior three weekends.

And the charts represent the percentage of change per phone over those two time-periods... not a percentage of overall activations.

They're calling it "lift"

For instance... if an average of 10 Pixel phones were sold during the three prior weekends... and then 13 Pixel phones were sold on Christmas weekend... that's a 30% increase that Localytics is showing on Christmas.

Here's their methodology:

"For this analysis, Localytics examined the percentage increase of new devices in the U.S. on Christmas Weekend, including Christmas Day, to a baseline of the prior three weekends in December (Nov 30th - Dec 4th, Dec 7th - Dec 11th, Dec 14th - Dec 18th)."

So apparently the Pixel phones showed the most percentage growth in sales... but their sales didn't even register in the Flurry data of overall sales.

Good stuff.

I didn’t have time to read the source link when I posted about this earlier, glad someone else did.

That’s some VERY creative accounting to make the Pixel look better than it actually is.

I have a question...

These analytics firms must know the actual numbers in order to calculate these percentages.

So why do they only give us the percentages? Do they have some obligation to protect these companies?

It's cool that Apple had 44% of all activations in the week leading up to Christmas. But 44% of what?

They're leaving us with more questions... even though they know the answers!

Because they don’t have the actual numbers. They likely have a subset of numbers from their own source (like a certain carrier or retail outlet/cell store). They use those to calculate the percentages and represent them as the results for the entire population.

 

[zipster]

I wouldn't be bummed at all. Apple implements a feature that prolongs the life of my device after the battery degrades past it's expected life cycle? I am in.

This is lovely PR speak. That 'feature' degrades the performance of the phone by over half.

 

[Michael Scrip]

They will finally learn from Q1. The Jan Conference Call will be a Religious Experience for Apple. No way to spin this one. 6 years since SJ left us. The end was bound to come eventually.

Perhaps the end of growth.

But it'll be difficult to feel bad for a company who can sell 70+ million smartphones at an average price of $700 each.

That's a $49,000,000,000 in revenue from just the iPhone.

I'm not pulling out my tiny violin just yet.

Plus... you know there's no such thing as infinite growth, right? Not for Apple. Not for anyone.

I guess we're gonna ignore that Samsung had its best-selling quarter with 88 million units 4 years ago... but was never able to reach that number again.

Samsung must be at "the end" since they haven't grown to 90 million, 95 million, or 100 million units a quarter anytime after 2014.

 

[Mobster1983]

My 6S has 199 cycles, 93% battery health, it's throttled.

I had a similiar issue. My iPhone 6s battery was replaced earlier this year by Apple under warranty so it is relatively young. iOS 11 just killed my phone though. Very slow and the battery would drop to 20% by 1 or 2 pm and have to be recharged. My wife's iPhone 6 Plus was even worse, being on the original battery. We witnessed a pretty bad accident a couple weeks ago and it took the phone app 15 seconds to open so she could call 911!

This is the first time I seriously considered switching over to an Android phone, I do like the new Samsungs and the Google Pixel. My wife though is absolutely dead set against it, being too familiar with Apple. I was planning to buy her a new phone for Christmas, and keep mine, but the cell carriers put a buy one get one free. We both got iPhone 8 Pluses. (I wanted an X but the deal did not extend to that). After a week, it's now 1 pm and my 8 Plus battery is still at 85%.

I think this throttling issue is really going to hurt Apple.

I didn’t have time to read the source link when I posted about this earlier, glad someone else did.

That’s some VERY creative accounting to make the Pixel look better than it actually is.

Because they don’t have the actual numbers. They likely have a subset of numbers from their own source (like a certain carrier or retail outlet/cell store). They use those to calculate the percentages and represent them as the results for the entire population.

Most of these analytics companies use software embedded in numerous apps. They pull numbers of activations from those apps and use that to calculate percentages. This would not give an accurate NUMBER of devices sold because not everyone would necessarily download the apps they use. They could, however, give a fairly representative ratio of the OS and brand of phones.

 

[deanthedev]

They will finally learn from Q1. The Jan Conference Call will be a Religious Experience for Apple. No way to spin this one. 6 years since SJ left us. The end was bound to come eventually.

So you disagree with Apples guidance for Q1?

 

[WannaGoMac]

iOS does give that message in Settings > Battery. If you don’t see it, any slowness that you are experiencing is _not_ due to throttling.

I believe you're incorrect. The battery message appears below the point at which Apple decides to throttle the phone.

 

[Order_66]

Wow so much hate over statistics, you'd think apple were actually taking android devices right out of the users hands and replacing them with iphones, if you don't like iphones then don't use them, moaning about statistics isn't going to change apples success.

 

[Glideslope]

So you disagree with Apples guidance for Q1?

Absolutely. They bet the farm on the X, and lost. I don't believe there was anything nefarious in the guidance. IMO, they thought it would be the 2nd coming of Christ. It simply demonstrates just how out of touch the Executive Team is with those outside of the Walled Garden. There is nothing in the X to make a Galaxy 8 user switch. iOS 11 is not much more stable than 8.0 Oreo. So, it was just die hard Apple Fans buying the X (for the most part.) Plus Apple claims to be the leader in phone sales over the Holidays, yet Android has the most activations? Tim needs to go. He does not care about the product. He cares about the "Image" and Stock price. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ets-74-bonus-boost-after-sales-profit-rebound

Personally I don't think AAPL will sell 35 million iPhones in total for Q1. However, choice is good. Many love their X. I sold my 6s for an 8+ and could care less about OLED. The "Cool Factor" is starting to wear thin with Apple. That has potential to be very dangerous.

 

[JackieInCo]

There was no question that I would be getting the iPhone 7+ and used the savings to buy AirPods. The X wasn't even a consideration.
[doublepost=1514417034][/doublepost]

iOS does give that message in Settings > Battery. If you don’t see it, any slowness that you are experiencing is _not_ due to throttling.

I never saw any such message on my 6S+ at 70% capacity so I assume my phone wasn't being throttled. I got the battery replaced a month ago and it went on being just as fast as it was before the new battery.

 

[deanthedev]

Absolutely. They bet the farm on the X, and lost. I don't believe there was anything nefarious in the guidance. IMO, they thought it would be the 2nd coming of Christ. It simply demonstrates just how out of touch the Executive Team is with those outside of the Walled Garden. There is nothing in the X to make a Galaxy 8 user switch. iOS 11 is not much more stable than 8.0 Oreo. So, it was just die hard Apple Fans buying the X (for the most part.) Plus Apple claims to be the leader in phone sales over the Holidays, yet Android has the most activations? Tim needs to go. He does not care about the product. He cares about the "Image" and Stock price. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ets-74-bonus-boost-after-sales-profit-rebound

Personally I don't think AAPL will sell 35 million iPhones in total for Q1. However, choice is good. Many love their X. I sold my 6s for an 8+ and could care less about OLED. The "Cool Factor" is starting to wear thin with Apple. That has potential to be very dangerous.

Care to place a wager on that? I can’t recall Apple ever mising their own guidance. I’d happily place a cash bet that Apple crushes Q1. As they say, put your money where your mouth is.

 

[nt5672]

Obviously software available on dozens of hardware makers devices is going to outsell software available on one manufactures devices. What’s your point?

Thats a ball of crap. Every time a non-apple software device is sold it could have been a Apple software device, but people chose non-apple. That means a lot of people are throwing Apple under the bus.

 

[falainber]

I have a question...

These analytics firms must know the actual numbers in order to calculate these percentages.

So why do they only give us the percentages? Do they have some obligation to protect these companies?

It's cool that Apple had 44% of all activations in the week leading up to Christmas. But 44% of what?

They're leaving us with more questions... even though they know the answers!

Well, I think those are not the actual numbers of sold phones. As I understand, Flurry offers some analytics software that other software developers could use. It's probably used widely enough to assume that it will be used equally on different phone models so they may come up comparative numbers for the phone models but they do not have actual sale numbers. So if someone buys the phone and does not install any applications that use Flurry - Flurry would not know anything about it.
[doublepost=1514419461][/doublepost]

Care to place a wager on that? I can’t recall Apple ever mising their own guidance. I’d happily place a cash bet that Apple crushes Q1. As they say, put your money where your mouth is.

Apple is known to low ball their estimates so them not missing their guidance is almost irrelevant. Their official guidance is not the same as their actual estimates (or those o the Wall Street).

 

[adnbek]

Oh I see, so it's fine to take data of the 30 day period following Apple's flagship release and compare it to the same 30 day period 7 months after the competition's release, but not the same cherrypicking in reverse? Wow, you really just lost any credibility you had.

No what he’s trying to tell you, but you are unable or unwilling to comprehend, is that Apple sells way more iPhones in its first 30 days than any Samsung S or Note model has ever managed to sell in their first 30 days. It’s not even close. iPhone sells the same number of units on its first launch weekend what a new Samsung sells in its first 30 days.

 

[Glideslope]

Care to place a wager on that? I can’t recall Apple ever mising their own guidance. I’d happily place a cash bet that Apple crushes Q1. As they say, put your money where your mouth is.

Sorry, I don’t gamble. We will know in 4 weeks. Give or take a few days.

 

[meboy]

That's a shame..
My Christmas wish for humanity is to be less stupid.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Companies are the ones making money. Not operative systems. The financial wealth of the company determines not only whether they are still around in a couple of years, but also their ability to invest in R&D and so forth.

So then what happened to Nokia and Microsoft with that train of thought?
To quote a line from Batman ... "Knowledge means nothing, it is the will to act". Nokia and Microsoft really didn't put much into R&D nor marketing push for their respective OS & devices to evolve from 2007 onward to mid 2017. One sold off their business rights the other foreclosed entirely.