Many good boys and girls received new iPhones and Android devices on Christmas day. According to research by Flurry Analytics, there were 6.8 million activations of iPhones and Android devices on December 25th. It was also a very "appy" day with 150 million apps downloaded.
The average daily activations on the first 20 days of December was 1.5 million for iOS and Android devices. On Christmas Day, activations jumped to more than 6.8 million, which was a 353% increase. Compared to Christmas Day 2010, which was the previous single-day record with 2.8 million device activations, Christmas 2011 grew by more than 140%.
The Android market also set records by more than tripling its life-to-date downloads of 3 billion reached in May 2011, to now over 10 billion cumulative downloads reached this December.
Nearly a quarter of a billion downloads occurred on Christmas Day 2011, which is more than double of any other day in the history of iOS and Android devices, except December 24, which delivered roughly 150 million downloads.
At its zenith, from 7 PM to 9 PM, hourly downloads exceeded 15 million. Between 11 AM to 11 PM, more than 175 million apps were downloaded.
With more than 140,000 apps, Flurry Analytics detected roughly 100% of all new iOS and Android devices activated each day. The company regularly triangulates its device coverage with publicly announced figures from Google and Apple.