iPhone users grabbed 6 million free apps a day in December

iPhone users were busy in December downloading more than 6 million of Apple's top free apps each day.

For the last month of 2011, the iPhone app store witnessed a record 6.04 million downloads per day, a 7 percent jump over the previous high of 5.45 million daily downloads in November.

Compiled by mobile ad firm Fiksu, the App Store Competitive Index looks at the total number of downloads of the top 200 free iPhone apps in the United States. The downloads have been gaining momentum since September when the average daily number was 3.8 million.

Of course, the jump in iPhone app downloads during December is hardly surprising, even to Fiksu.

The critical Christmas season lights a fire under mobile advertisers eager to share in the holiday tidings. Advertisers spent big bucks throughout the month to bump up their app store rankings.

And the amount of money spent during the final week of Christmas jumped 100 percent over the prior weeks, says the mobile ad firm.

"This presented advertisers with sufficient budgets the rare chance to acquire twice as many loyal users," noted Fiksu. "For many major app brands, and game apps in particular, this exceptional opportunity certainly justified increased budgets. Eager consumers actively downloaded apps on their new devices, and the brands that had secured higher ranks were able to acquire a higher volume of loyal app users."

The number of downloads were also boosted by the sheer volume of iPhones scooped up by consumers. For the final quarter of 2011, Apple sold 37 million iPhones, a figure much higher than expected.

December also saw a leap in the number of iOS (and Android) device activations, leading up to 6.8 million between the two platforms just on Christmas Day. One story has suggested that Apple alone saw 4.2 million iOS devices activated on December 25.