App Download Reaches Record High Over the Winter Break

An impressive increase of 60% mobile app downloads was seen from the 25th December through to 31st December over the week prior. Mobile analytics firm Flurry, estimates that this was the first time the 1 billion download mark has been passed over a 7 day time period.

Flurry describes this as a “power week” where an estimated 20 million iOS and Android devices were activated. Flurry estimates that prior to the winter break, the global active installed of Android and iOS devices was 245 million, suggesting an 8% increase in the final week.

The United States is recognised to be behind the bulk of the app downloads, with over 40%, 509 million being attributed to them. China places in 2nd with 99 million and the UK is snapping at their heals at 81 million. Canada, Germany and France each share around 40 million, this is around 3%.

Flurry vice-president of marketing, Peter Farago, suggests that in the future these seemingly large download figures will be common place with the constant growth of mobile internet devices.

“Looking forward to 2012, Flurry expects breaking the one-billion-download-barrier per week will become more common-place. While iOS and Android growth continues to amaze, the market is still by all measures relatively nascent.”

Flurry attributes its ability to collect such data is due to their large detection penetration of over 140,000 apps.

 “Flurry can detect over 90% of all new devices activated each day.”

The majority of the popular apps are free to download games, such as Angry Birds and Where’s My Water? For the UK, free TV catch-up apps like BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and 4oD reign supreme.