The last week in 2011 was the biggest ever for Android and iOS. According to mobile app analytics company Flurry, over 20 million devices were activated between Christmas and New Year, and 1.2 billion apps were downloaded. That’s about 60 percent higher than every week of December before Christmas, and marks the largest number of apps ever downloaded in a single week, passing a billion downloads for the first time.
Record-breaking 1.2 billion apps downloaded during Christmas week
According to Flurry Analytics, a record-breaking 20 million iOS and Android devices were activated and 1.2 billion apps downloaded over the week between Christmas and New Year.
According to Flurry Analytics, a record-breaking 20 million iOS and Android devices were activated and 1.2 billion apps downloaded over the week between Christmas and New Year.
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
Christmas Day was the high point of the week for activations, with 6.8 million. Downloads were a bit more spaced out, with only about a fifth of them taking place on the 25th. Flurry doesn’t give numbers for iOS and Android individually, but Andy Rubin of Google tweeted the following a few days later:
UPDATE: There were 3.7M Android devices activated on 12/24 and 12/25.
— Andy Rubin (@Arubin) December 28, 2011
From this and previous reports, Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt deduced that about 1.6 million more iOS devices were activated on the 25th than Android ones. However, this doesn’t account for Kindle activations, which he says wouldn’t be counted in Rubin’s tweet. Regardless of who took the top spot, if these numbers are right, Google and Apple have a lot to celebrate now that the holidays are over.
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