That’s according to Flurry, which measures such things by the data-gathering component included in over 260,000 apps running on iOS and Android. According to the Flurry blog, Flurry can detect over 90% of all new devices activated each day. With its analytics service in more than 25% of all iOS and Android applications, Flurry can reliably track iOS and Android downloads. I have heard Flurry speak on several occasions and its ability to track stuff like this is truly awesome.
Flurry estimates that 17.4 million iOS and Android apps were activated on Christmas day with 328 million application downloads. For Christmas week, December 25-31, 50 million iOS and Android devices were activated and 1.76 billion applications were downloaded. All the numbers mentioned above set new records. The top 10 countries, in declining order, were US, China, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Russia, Italy, Mexico, and South Korea. The full chart is above. Remember that not all countries celebrate Christmas, so this must be taken into account in comparing holiday statistics.
Flurry predicts that, in 2013, the trend of one-billion-download weeks will become the norm and that the industry will exceed the two-billion download week in the fourth quarter.
Paul Biba is a retired corporate international lawyer who has worked in 53 countries. Since he is a very fast reader he came to ebooks out of self-defense in order to avoid carrying a suitcase of books on his travels around the world. An early ebook adopter, he has read on Palms, Pocket PCs and practically every device that has been out there. After being a frequent contributor to TeleRead.com, the oldest ebook/epublishing blog on the net, Paul became TeleRead's Editor-in-Chief, a position he recently resigned. Send Paul an email to paulkbiba@gmail.com
