Apple tops Holiday smartphone sales worldwide: Survey

  Apple came away the winner in mobile device holiday sales worldwide amid a shift to bigger screens, a survey showed. The survey by the Yahoo-owned analytics firm Flurry showed Apple accounted for 49.1% of smartphones and tablets activated over the Christmas week, compared to 19.8% for South Korean rival Samsung. "Christmas is traditionally the biggest day of the year for new smart-device activations and app downloads, and 2015 was no exception, with new device activations and app installs shattering record after record," Flurry vice president Jarah Euston said in a blog post Monday. The survey found more consumers around the world opting for large-screen smartphones or "phablets," which are often used in place of a tablet computer. Apple entered the phablet market last year with the iPhone 6 Plus and upgraded it this year with the 6S Plus. "Of course the introduction of an Apple phablet -- and subsequently the iPhone 6S Plus -- had a lot to do with the strength of phablets," Euston said. "But that's not the whole story. When we examined the form factor distribution by operating system we saw that for the first time phablets accounted for half of all Android devices! The popularity of the Samsung Galaxy Note and its imitators have changed the Android game, especially in Asian markets."