6.8 million Apple, Android devices fired up on Christmas Day

PanARMENIAN.Net - People fired up 6.8 million Apple and Android devices on Christmas Day, Dec 25, more than doubling the 2.5 million that they activated on the same day last year, according to Flurry Analytics, a mobile metrics firm that tracks activity from 140,000 apps.

On the days leading up to Christmas, people activated about 1.5 million Apple and Android smartphones and tablets each day. But on Christmas itself, activations shot up more than 350%, to 6.8 million.

Perhaps a bit predictably, Christmas Day app downloads began to rocket up around 6 a.m., and remained high throughout the day until they hit a peak around 8 p.m. - that is, after dinner, when sated revelers can play with their new toys in earnest. More than 15 million apps were downloaded between 7 and 9 p.m. alone, if you line up all the world's time zones.

The Flurry report notes that app downloads have shot up in 2011, with Apple users downloading close to 10 billion this year, as many as in the previous three years combined. Google's Android devices have seen similarly rapid growth, Los Angeles Times reported.