iOS, Android apps surpass 1 billion downloads in final week of 2011
The last week of the year proved to be the largest ever for both app downloads and device activations in the history of iOS and Android, according to new data from Flurry.
Apple iOS and Android users downloaded a record 1.2 billion apps during the last week of 2011, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry.
The seven days from Sunday, December 25, through Saturday, December 31, saw a 60 percent jump in the average number of downloads from the first two full weeks of the month. The final week also handily beat the previous week's record of 857 million to zoom past 1 billion for the first time.
Along with downloads, 2011's final week captured a record number of device activations. For the full week, more than 20 million iOS and Android devices were activated.
The week's numbers capped off a Christmas Day record of 242 million apps downloaded and 6.8 million devices activated for both mobile platforms.
Traveling across the globe, the U.S. accounted for 509 million downloads last week, or 42.3 percent of the world's total. China, considered the world's second largest app market, took second place with 99 million downloads. Though China grabbed only one fifth as many downloads as did the U.S., such a gap isn't surprising, noted Flurry.
The Christmas holidays clearly played a huge role in the record app downloads across the world. While a sizable number of those in the U.S. celebrate Christmas, China is home to only a small minority who would celebrate the holiday.
Behind China, the U.K., Canada, Germany, France, and other Western countries pulled in a hefty percentage of downloads last week.
To compile its data, Flurry looks at more than 144,000 apps running on a majority of iOS and Android devices and coordinates its own numbers with those publicly released by Apple and Google.