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More than 1 billion apps downloaded during holiday week

Week after Christmas breaks record for device activations and app downloads.

January 3, 2012

Lots of people got mobile devices in their stockings this Christmas, according to mobile analytics company Flurry.  The company released its data for mobile application downloads and device activations during the holidays, and the numbers are staggering.

In a post on the company's blog, Peter Farago, vice president of marketing for Flurry, said the week after Christmas is always the largest week of the year for activations and downloads. That's not surprising since mobile devices are popular gift items. Farago said in his post the week after Christmas is more important to app developers than the prelude to the holiday itself.

This year, the period between Dec. 25 and Dec. 31, 2011 saw the largest week of activations of iOS and Android devices ever, according to Flurry's data. More than 20 million iOS and Android devices were activated during the period and more than 1.2 billion applications were downloaded, the first time more than 1 billion applications were downloaded in a seven day period.

While the entire week after Christmas saw huge numbers of activations and downloads, Christmas Day itself was a record breaker, too. According to Flurry's data, Christmas is the single largest day in terms of phone activations and app downloads, and this year, 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated and 242 million applications were downloaded on Christmas Day alone.

Farago broke down the activations and downloads by country as well. Of the 1.2 billion downloads, the United States made up more than 42 percent of the total with 509 million downloads. The company said the U.S. makes up 41 percent of the installed base of active iOS and Android devices.

Flurry's data comes from more than 140,000 apps running on most iOS and Android devices. The company claims it can detect more than 90 percent of new devices activated every day. It also said with a presence on more than 20 percent of downloaded applications it can estimate how many iOS and Android downloads are made every day.

For more stories like this, visit the Trends/Statistics research center.