Here's a pretty interesting chart from mobile analytics company Flurry. On Christmas day, 51% of mobile activations were for tablets, as opposed to 49% for smartphones. For the first three weeks of the month, smartphones accounted for 80% of the activations.
Flurry doesn't speculate about why tablets were so strong. Our guess: Buying an iPad or a Kindle Fire as a present is much easier than buying a smartphone. With a smartphone you have to sign up for a two-year contract. With a tablet, you just buy it. Also, cheaper tablets like the Kindle Fire are great presents. You seem thoughtful without having to completely destroy your life savings.
And to that end, Flurry says, "Amazon had a very strong performance in the tablet category, growing by several thousand percent over its baseline of tablet activations over the earlier part of December," but it doesn't break out any specifics about units or market share.
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