Can you guess the only phone among the top ten activated in the US at Christmas that was not an iPhone?

Apparently, Santa Claus and his elves prefer iOS to Android. According to research firm Flurry Analytics, the top nine devices activated on Christmas Day in the U.S. were all iPhone models led by last year’s iPhone 11. Overall, smartphone activations on Christmas Day fell 23% year on year. The decline is being attributed to the blow to the American economy caused by the COVID-19 virus. Traditionally, Christmas Day is the single biggest day for new smartphone activations. Flurry foresaw difficult December, which was not surprising, considering the unemployment rate of 7% in the states and the lower than normal number of activations in November.

If you take a look at the chart that Flurry produced, you can see the names of the top 10 phones activated on Christmas Day. A gray dotted line marks the moving average of seven days of activations leading up to Christmas day. The green or red number shows whether the number of activations on Christmas Day for a specific phone was greater than the moving average for a week of activations (green) or whether the activations on Christmas Day were less than the recent average (red).

For example, based on the graph, for the second consecutive year, the iPhone 11 was the most activated phone on Christmas Day. Activations on December 25 were 5% higher than the average number of iPhone 11 units activated from December 18 to 24. The ten most activated phones in the U.S. on Christmas Day include:

The biggest increase in Christmas Day activations compared to the previous week’s average was the 181% gain recorded by the LG K300. Three iPhone models have seen the number of units connected during Christmas day decrease compared to the number connected during the week before Christmas. These models were the iPhone 11 Pro Max (-6%), iPhone 8 Plus (-9%) and the iPhone 8 (-7%).

The weakness of the American economy caused by the pandemic was certainly part of the reason why two economy phones did well on Christmas Day. The iPhone SE (2020) and the LG K300 had an increase in activation of 34% and 181%. Flurry noted that “Typically, Apple’s next-generation devices come out at launch, as early users rush to buy the most advanced Apple smartphone available. As the masses slowly replace their old devices, the base model – this one year iPhone 12 – usually gaining in popularity … iPhone 12 Pro Max had the strongest launch week among all Apple iPhone devices in the past three years, indicating strong and lasting demand for its most premium smartphone. ”