Under the tree: iPads, more iPads and iPhone XRs

A study of new activations suggests that the iPhone XR, despite rumors, had a great Christmas. But not as great as the iPad.

From the Localytics blog:

In 2016 we found that iPads dominated the leaderboards for new device activations over the Christmas holiday, while in 2017 the Google Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, and the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X took the top five. In 2018, iPads returned to the top of the list as they nearly swept the top five, proving that their stellar performance years ago was not just a flash in the pan.

Click to enlarge.

Despite slight market share misgivings, the iPhone XR managed to have great adoption this Christmas, witnessing the greatest lift in activations of any new Apple device in the past three years. The number of new XRs activated by consumers grew by 88% over Christmas, while XS activations grew by 49% and XS Max activations by 36%. It’s also important to remember that the XS and XS Max have been in the market since September, while the XR came out in late October.

Click to enlarge.

Methodology:

Localytics processes 3 billion data points daily. For this analysis, Localytics examined the percentage increase in the quantity of new devices from December 24th to Dec 26th to a baseline number of new devices over the same days in the prior 3 weeks (Dec. 3rd – Dec. 5th, Dec. 10th – Dec. 12th, Dec 17th – Dec 19th). A new device is defined as a device that is seen by Localytics for the first time by downloading one of the apps incorporating our SDK. For market share data, we examined the relative percentage of each model as of Dec 27th 2018. All data in this study is based on international device usage.

My take: Compared with CIRP’s survey of 165 Apple customers, this is big data. Both studies pose a challenge for the iPhone-XR-disappointment meme. (See, for example here, here and here.)