amazing, i wasn't even one of them
January 3, 2012 8:30 pm
Record 1.2bn app downloads over Christmas
By Maija Palmer in London
More than 1.2bn apps were downloaded on to mobile phones and tablet devices during Christmas week, according to a new study, marking the first time that more than a billion app downloads have been recorded in a single week.
An estimated 20m Android and Apple devices were activated during the week of Christmas, according to estimates from Flurry, the mobile analytics company, as people received iPads and smartphones as gifts. Flurry estimated that just before the holidays the global, active installed base of Apple and Android devices was 245m, implying an 8 per cent increase in devices last week.
Last month, the analytics company had forecast that downloads would go beyond a record 1bn during Christmas week, but even this estimate proved too conservative. The bulk of downloads originated in the US, according to Flurry, accounting for 509m or 42.3 per cent of the total. The second largest number, 99m, were in China which is seeing rapid increases in smartphone use.
Peter Farago, vice-president of marketing at Flurry, said he expected these levels of downloads to become more common as the installed base of mobile internet devices grew.
“Looking forward to 2012, Flurry expects breaking the 1bn per week download barrier will become more commonplace. While iOS and Android growth continues to amaze, the market is still by all measures relatively nascent,” he said.
The UK was third in number of downloads, with 81m, ahead of countries like Canada, Germany and France. Games such as Angry Birds and Where’s My Water? dominated the charts of most popular downloads, with board-games, such as Monopoly, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit, adapted for mobile devices, seeing the largest numbers of downloads.
In the UK, many people also installed free catch-up TV applications, such as the BBC iPlayer, the ITV Player and 4oD Catch Up. Skype, the free video calling service was also among the top 10 free apps on the Apple store in the UK.
Flurry gathered its data via its analytics tool which monitored downloads and usage of 140,000 apps in both Google’s Android Market and Apple’s App Store. The company did not break down numbers for the individual operating systems.
However, the split between Apple and Android appears roughly even. Flurry estimated that 6.8m devices were activated on Christmas day and Google confirmed that more than 3.7m new Android-based devices came into use over the Christmas weekend.
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