iPhone Holiday Phone Hit But Tablet Shake-Up Sees Surface Score

Apple's iPhone was the only smartphone platform to gain market share over the holiday period, research indicates, though the competitive tablet segment saw greater interest in Amazon's Kindle Fire and Microsoft's Surface as overall iPad share dropped. Users of iPhones over the holidays, as measured by active web use by Chitika, rose 1.8-percent to 54.3-percent of the North American market, it's reported, while Motorola, HTC, LG, and Samsung share all dropped.

That, Chitika suggests, is down to the new iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s each turning up gift-wrapped and under the tree for many people over Christmas. Google's share stayed flat at 0.7-percent, while of all the other manufacturers measured Samsung saw the biggest decline, down 0.8-percent. Still, it holds its second place position behind Apple by a large margin, with 23.7-percent share.

Over in tablets, however, the market has been shaken a little differently. Apple still holds the lion's share, based on web traffic, with 76.1-percent of the North American market, but that actually declined in the period between December 20 and December 29 2013, by 1.3-percent.

Winners included Amazon – which saw the biggest rise, a 0.6-percent jump to almost 10-percent of the tablet market in the region – and Microsoft, Surface tablets from which were a surprising hit over the holidays. In fact, Chitika says, Surface users were a source of more tablet web traffic than all Google Nexus tablet users following the holiday.

Overall, the ad firm concludes, Apple's combined smartphone and tablet share are still dominant, but lower-cost devices, particularly among tablets, are helping other companies carve out a little space for themselves. In smartphones specifically, it may take more than a minor refresh to single out a device; Chitika echoes comments from late 2013 that the North American device market is "mature" and is unlikely to see any significant changes in the near future.