Adventures in Data: Which Tablet "Won" Christmas?

The day after Christmas, after emerging from my eggnog coma, I decided to check in on our stats and take a look at which devices grew the most over the holidays in the United States. I pulled our count of unique users by device for Christmas Day versus the seven days before Christmas to see which devices saw the most growth. There were a few very interesting points!

Android and iOS grew roughly the same amount. Overall, the percentage increase in unique users on Android and iOS was almost identical… So neither one seems to have blown the other out of the water in terms of Christmas gift sales.

Tablets Dominated. When I looked at the top 10 devices by percentage growth (that is, relative to their user base before Christmas), the list contained 9 tablets, 1 iPod touch, and zero smartphones. This strongly suggests that tablets were the technology gift of choice this holiday season.

iPad Mini was Top Tablet. The tablet with the biggest number of additional users was the iPad Mini. It was no surprise to me to see Apple?s beloved tablet blowing away the competition at a new, lower price point. Overall, we saw 283% more (that?s 3.8x more) iPad Minis on Christmas day as we had on average over the previous seven days. I, for one, spent all day on Christmas playing Candy Crush Saga on my iPad Mini.

…But the Kindle Fire saw the greatest percentage growth. While the iPad mini had a larger total number of new users, the Kindle Fire line saw the greatest percentage growth with over 400% more devices on Christmas day (averaged across all three of its new models). This is, of course, great news for Amazon game developers who are looking for larger audiences.

Other tablets with a large percentage growth were the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7? Wifi, the 4th generation iPad, and the 2nd generation iPad (which I had almost forgotten was back on the market). The 5th generation iPod touch also saw huge percentage growth, as the only non-tablet in the top 10. All in all, it was a huge day for new devices sales which will inevitably translate into larger audiences for all of our game developers!

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