2012’s final week sees most device activations, app downloads

Flurry, a mobile analytics firm with data-based ad platforms, used its data-set from more than 260,000 apps running on iOS and Android devices to detect device activation and app downloads between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. In total, Flurry estimates that more than 50 million iOS and Android devices were activated during the holiday week, and that 1.76 billion apps were downloaded.

On Christmas Day alone, Flurry estimates that there were a record-breaking 17.4 million iOS and Android device activations, and 328 million app downloads, also breaking the record. On Christmas Day of 2011, 6.8 million devices were activated, the previous single-day record, meaning that this year saw a 155 per cent increase from last year. (SEE ALSO: Apple’s returns policy most searched for on Christmas Day – report)

Flurry also believes that, while smartphone activations are usually activated four times as much as tablets, Christmas Day 2012 saw more tablets activated than smartphones, with Apple’s iPad and iPad mini, as well as Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD the main players.

When taking a closer look, Flurry estimates that the US contributed most to the 1.76 billion app downloads during the last week of 2012, with a total of around 604 million downloads (34.3 per cent). China is estimated to have accounted for 183 million of the app downloads, with the UK third at 132 million.

Flurry predicts that the trend of one-billion-download weeks will become the norm in 2013, with the industry expected to surpass the two-billion downloads in a week in the fourth quarter.