Apple’s iPhone Gains Market Share In US During Holidays As iPad Remains Dominant Despite Competition

During the past holiday season, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone was the only smartphone to gain market share, while the company’s iPad remained the dominant player in the tablet segment, despite losing some ground to rival manufacturers such as Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Samsung (KRX:005935), according to a new report from Chitika, a web and advertising analytics firm.

The report, based on web-traffic data from “tens of millions” of U.S. and Canadian mobile devices across the company's network between Dec. 20 and Dec. 29., showed that the iPhone gained market share even after the Christmas-shopping rush, indicating that the company’s latest iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models continued to be a hit among consumers. On the other hand, market share of other handset vendors such as Motorola, HTC (TPE:2498), LG (KRX:066570) and Samsung, all declined between 0.1 percent and 0.8 percent when their sales were compared to pre-Christmas numbers.

“Although these figures help identify the overall trend within the North American market, keep in mind that the precise traffic share changes observed directly following Christmas are likely to moderate slightly in the coming weeks and months as usage returns to non-holiday levels,” the Chitika report said.

Meanwhile, the iPad’s market share slipped by 1.3 percentage points against its competitors, which could be partially attributed to the tablet’s higher price point that may have pushed people toward other brands. While the iPad maintained a massive 76.1 percent share of the overall market, Amazon's Kindle tablets were the biggest contributor to the iPad's decline.

According to the report, Microsoft’s Surface lineup also had an impressive year-end run, generating more web traffic than all other tablets with the exception of Amazon's, following the holiday.

“While Apple’s iPad is unlikely to relinquish its crown as top driver of tablet Web traffic in the forseeable future, Amazon’s Kindle Fire has performed very well for a second consecutive year, and Microsoft’s notable year-over-year rise in the space, from 0.4% share to 2.3%, underscores the market’s more ‘wide open’ nature,” the report said.