Smartphones are among the hottest gift items during the holiday season so it is always interesting to go through the smartphone activation data during this period and see how major OEMs performed. Like every year, Apple took the top spot with a staggering 44 percent of device activations.

While Apple has been topping the list for the last few years, this was the first time when it had such a huge lead. Samsung came in second with 26 percent of the global device activations. Huawei came in third with a measly 5 percent, while Xiaomi, Motorola, LG and Oppo each accounted for 2 percent of the global device activations during the holiday period.

While Google is nowhere to be found in global device activations, things are completely different when we look at the device activation data of the United States during the Christmas weekend. As per Localytics, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL saw the largest bump in their activations over the Christmas weekend compared to the Thanksgiving weekend. The iPhone X came in third followed by the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Apple dominated the list with the iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPad Pro, 5th gen. iPad and the 10.5-inch iPad Pro occupying the spots from 3 to 8. Samsung rounded the top 10 device activations in the United States with the Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S8 taking the 9th and 10th spots, respectively.

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL topping the charts is a very impressive feat especially since the original Pixels were nowhere to be found in the list last year. Plus, they managed to surpass the iPhone X which was easily the most hyped smartphone of this year. The strong performance of the Pixels can be attributed to the various promotional offers by Best Buy and Verizon who offered hefty discounts on them. Google also chimed in with a $100 credit for Project Fi users to attract new customers and make the new Pixels a tempting Christmas gift. Nonetheless, remember that the total number of Pixel 2 activations across the globe is still lower than the total number of iPhone X or iPhone 8 activations by a fair margin.

Which smartphone did you buy or gift someone this Christmas? Drop a comment and let us know!

Update: A previous version of this article erroneously mentioned that the Pixel 2 outsold the iPhone X in the U.S. over the Christmas weekend.