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Christmas Week 2012 Breaks Records for Android, iOS Mobile Device Activations and App Downloads

Announcement posted by SmarterApps 05 Feb 2013

Australian app builder offers insight into how this news will affect both iOS and Android app creators and developers.
Early this year, advertiser and analytics company Flurry released their estimates of the Christmas season device activations and app downloads for the combined market of Android and Apple’s iOS. The combined output of Android and iOS set records for both Christmas Day and Christmas week in two very important metrics: mobile device activations and app downloads.

Flurry currently has advertising and analytics installed in approximately 260,000 apps that run on most popular Android and iOS devices. Flurry estimates that they can track more than 90% of device activations on a daily basis. They estimate that they are “in” roughly 25% of apps sold on Google Play or the App Store on any given day, which makes it simple mathematics to make a reliable estimate of app downloads. Flurry checks and tweaks its algorithm by triangulating their information with the data that Google and Apple make available to the public.

According to Flurry’s estimates, combined iOS and Android mobile device activations reached 17.4 million on Christmas day, and that 328 million apps were downloaded that day. Both are records. In addition, during the week between Christmas and New Year, more than 50 million Android and iOS devices were activated, while there were 1.76 billion app downloads.

The 1.76 million was a 65% increase over the weekly average sales for the two weeks between 4th December and 17th December, and broke the record for the same week during 2011. Every week from the last week of November to the week before Christmas saw at least 1 billion downloads.

The US had the most holiday week downloads with 604 million. China, which doesn’t celebrate Christmas, still managed 183 million to come in second. Australia had the tenth-highest number with 32 million downloads. According to Flurry’s estimates, Christmas week in 2013 will surpass 2 billion downloads, and many weeks will surpass 1 million downloads.

Craig Aitken, Owner of SmarterApps, was excited by the news: “I’m glad to see both Android and iOS do so well this year. Usually, information like this pits the companies against each other; we needed numbers like this to remind us of just how big the mobile device business has become.”

Aitken continued: “This is great news for app developers, app creators, and app builders. When you look at numbers that large, it is obvious that there is unprecedented demand for apps on both platforms. No matter what platform you prefer, they had a great year, and it’s only going to get better. When you add Microsoft, and possibly Facebook into the mix, 2013 could be one of those years where the apps business undergoes an exponential increase.”

Aitken is prepared for a sharp rise in demand for apps: “We are gearing up for our biggest year ever, and are already prepared to build twice as many apps this year if we need to. Both Android and iOS are on the rise. Android is rising faster, and has caught up with iOS in almost every way this year, but both companies are going to sell a lot of mobile devices this year, and consumers and businesses are going to want new apps.”

Aitken concluded, “If there was ever a time to decide to become an app creator or developer, it’s now.”

SmarterApps is a mobile apps builder and developer based in Perth, Australia. They specialise in iOS mobile apps and Android mobile apps. For more information, visit here: http://www.smarterapps.com.au/services or call 1300 650 253.