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Christmas may break record for app downloads

December 25, 2013 / 12:40 PM EST / CBS News

Christmas is being called the biggest app download day of the year -- and it has a lot to do with new devices on the market. Bloomberg reports that analytics firm Flurry says more people fire up mobile devices for the first time on Christmas than any other day of the year.

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A 2012 Flurry report says that 328 million apps were downloaded on Dec. 25, 2012, which is 36 percent more than in 2011. The company says the spike in downloads correlates to the increased number of new smartphones and tablets activated on Christmas.

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In 2012, the number of new devices activated increased from 4 million per day between Dec. 1 -20 to 17.4 million per day on Dec. 25 -- 332 percent -- with a variance of “a few hundred thousand.” App downloads in the same time frame increased 112 percent – from 155 million apps per day to 328 million apps per day.

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Flurry says it monitors over 400,000 apps on more than 1.2 billion mobile devices. The company says it detects over 90 percent of new iOS and Android device activations a day.

According to Bloomberg, a recent survey conducted by marketing firm Harris Interactive for software company Soasta says that 30 percent of smartphone and tablet-owning Americans plan to download a mobile app on Dec. 25.

About 49 percent of those surveyed said they plan to download a game, 43 percent planned to download a music app and 27 percent said they would download a weather app.

Men were more likely than women to say they wanted to download an app – 35 percent versus 24 percent. Millennials led the pack of those expected to download apps, with 47 percent, followed by 25 percent of 35-44 year olds and 21 percent of 45-54 year olds.

Harris Interactive surveyed 2,033 Americans in November 2013, of whom 1,242 owned a smartphone or tablet.

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