iOS, Android activations surge 353% on record setting Christmas Day

Devices running Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms saw a huge spike in activations Christmas Day, growing 353 percent from average totals earlier in December.

In the first 20 days of December, mobile device activations tracked by analytics firm Flurry were around 1.5 million each day. But on Dec. 25, it identified 6.8 million new iOS and Android activations, representing 353 percent growth.

The previous single-day record tracked by Flurry came on Christmas Day in 2010, when there were 2.8 million device activations. That means Christmas 2011, the new record-holder for the biggest activation day, saw growth of more than 140 percent.

Flurry's statistics come from the company's analytics software, which is found in more than 140,000 applications. Peter Farago, vice president of marketing with Flurry, claimed that his company's statistics detect "roughly" 100 percent of new iOS and Android devices activated each day.

Application downloads on both iOS and Android also grew by 125 percent on Christmas Day, reaching 242 million. For the first 20 days of December, downloads averaged 108 million.

Flurry's statistics show Apple's App Store on pace to exceed 10 billion application downloads by the end of 2011. That would double the cumulative number of downloads that came in 2008, 2009 and 2010 combined.

Google's Android Market has also had a banner year in 2011. As of May 2011 it had 3 billion cumulative application downloads, but that number is expected to reach 10 billion by the end of the year.

Flurry reported earlier this month that iOS applications rake in 300 percent more revenue than their Android counterparts. That means for every dollar generated by an iOS application, a corresponding Android application brings in 24 cents in revenue.

As for activations, Google Vice President Andy Rubin said last week that new Android devices are being activated at a rate of 700,000 units per day. Apple has not revealed daily iOS activations in over a year, but did announce during its last quarterly earnings conference call that more than 250 million iOS devices had been sold to date.