Christmas Day saw record iOS and Android activations

Over 17 million iOS and Android devices activated, record 328 million apps downloaded

There is a good chance that when you woke up on Christmas morning, you found that Santa had stuffed either an iOS or Android device in your stocking.

On Christmas Day of this year, there were more iPhones, iPads, Galaxy's and Kindle Fires activated than on any other day in history, mobile analytics company Flurry said in a report released Thursday.

According to Flurry with over 260,000 apps using its analytics software, the company "detects over 90% of all new iOS and Android devices activated each day." And on Christmas, it found that over 17.4 million devices were activated, a 250% increase over the previous record of 6.8 million on Christmas Day 2011.

Taken on average, the number of devices activated for the first 20 days of the month was roughly four million. Christmas saw an increase of 332% over the monthly average.

Of course, with the surge in smartphone and tablet activations, there was also a boost to new app downloads on iOS and Android.

From December the first to the twentieth, there was an average of 155 million apps downloaded a day. That number grew 112%, to 328 million apps downloaded on Christmas this year, once again setting a new record. 

Flurry says that it is anticipating downloads to remain elevated through the rest of the month, up until New Years, and that they will eventually surpass more than 1.5 billion. They even have a shot at breaking through the 2 billion download barrier for the first time ever, Flurry said in the report.

When the data is broken down between smartphone and tablets, something interesting emerges: smartphones dominated for the first 20 days of the month, 80% to 20%, but were slightly edged out by tablets as gifts on Christmas, 51% to 49%.

The most activated devices were, Flurry says, were Apple iPads, Apple iPad Minis and Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7” tablets.

Does this mean that people do not like to buy their own tablets for some reason? Or does it mean that people were simply waiting to get them as gifts, so they did not go out and buy them themselves? 

Either way, this news should not come as too much of a surprise, as two reports released Thursday show how popular tablets were this holiday season, and this year as a whole.

Amazon announced Thursday that it had it's biggest holiday season ever, said that its best selling items for this season were its tablets: the Kindle Fire HD, the Kindle Fire, the Kindle Paperwhite and the Kindle held the top four spots on the Amazon worldwide best seller charts since launching. Sales of apps and games during the holiday period were up more than 250% year-to-year.

Overall tablet ownership was up 150%, according to Pew Internet & American Life Project report released Thursday. A full 25% of American adults now own a tablet of some kind.  One in three owns either a tablet or an e-reader.

In 2010, only 9% of American adults owned either a tablet or an e-reader, and by December 2011 only 10% owned e-readers and another 10% owned tablets. That means that the percentage of adults using tablets has more than doubled in a single year. 

Flurry could not be reached for further comment on the report.

(Image source: https://www.macsessed.com)