Android, iOS Activations Skyrocket Over Christmas Weekend

Posted 12/28/2011 at 7:34am | by Paul Lilly

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Judging by the number of activations over the weekend, it appears Santa handed out a sack full of Android and iOS devices for the holiday, some of which were opened ahead of Christmas. Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of mobile at Google, fired off a tweet and a Google+ post earlier this morning announcing there were 3.7 million Android devices activated on Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

To put that into perspective, Apple sold 4 million iPhone 4S devices during its opening weekend. As for the holiday weekend, it's unclear exactly how many iOS devices Apple managed to move, but according to data released by Flurry Analytics, there were 6.8 million Android and iOS device activations combined on December 25, 2011. That's a 140 percent jump over the previous single day record of 2.8 million activations, which occurred on Christmas day in 2010.

"Historically, more iOS and Android apps are downloaded on Christmas than on any other day of the year," Flurry explained. "This is due to a massive influx of smartphones and tablets given as gifts. As fast as loved-ones can unwrap their shiny, new Galaxy IIs, iPhones, iPads, Kindle Fires, et cetera, they start loading them up with new apps."

According to Flurry, Android and iOS owners downloaded nearly a quarter of a billion apps -- 242 million, to be exact --on Christmas day, up 125 percent over the average for December 1-20.