6.8 Million iOS & Android Devices Activated on Christmas Day

Some 6.8 million combined iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas Day, according to analytics firm Flurry. The company released a report Tuesday that showed the number of device activations increased 353% over the daily average for the rest of December, and 140% over last year’s record Christmas activations.

Flurry is a mobile app analytics firm. The company produces software tools that developers can then embed in their mobile apps. The developers get data on their apps, and Flurry frequently releases reports on the mobile industry as a whole. The firm claims that with a 140,000 apps using its technology, it has effective coverage of 100% of all new device activations.

Christmas Day is a big day in the mobile world because iOS, and now Android, devices are major gifts for the holidays. In 2010, for instance, the biggest activation day of the year was Christmas Day, with 2.8 million device activations on that day alone.

In 2011, Flurry said that there was an average of some 1.5 million iOS and Android activations every day from December 1st through the 20th. The company said those numbers were consistent throughout the period, and that daily totals ranged from 1.3 to 1.8 million, for a daily average of 1.5 million.

On Christmas Day (December 25th), there were some 6.8 million activations, 353% higher than the rest of the month, and 140% over December 25th of 2010’s previous record.

Flurry Chart

The company also said that there were 242 million app downloads across the two platforms. This number was derived by taking actual Flurry-enabled app downloads and extrapolating total downloads based on what the firm believes is its total market penetration.

That figure, 242 million app downloads, is a 125% increase from the average daily number of downloads between December 1st and December 20th of 108 million. While impressive, it’s far short of the 353% increase in new activations. Flurry said that is because the installed base of existing users is vastly larger than the number of new devices activated on Christmas Day, which keeps the base line numbers higher in proportion.

Flurry Chart

The last chart we included is more for the information junkies out there. The firm broke down the number of downloads per hour on Christmas Day and compared that to the average hourly downloads for the first 20 days in December. This chart allows you to see the effect of millions of kids (both of the adult and actual child variety) opening up their presents in the morning hours and instantly downloading some variant of Angry Birds.

Flurry Chart

Flurry said that the entire week between Christmas Day and January 1st will see higher than average downloads as millions of people with time off and new devices play with their gadgets.

Note that Flurry has not separated numbers for iOS and Android.