Record-breaking 3.7 million Android devices were activated this past weekend, iOS close by

Vlad Bobleanta  By on 28 Dec 11

This past weekend was Christmas. And that’s when the famous holiday shopping season obviously ends. Now if you were thinking that many more people bought gadgets than in any ordinary day, you’d be right.

In fact, on Saturday, December 24, and Sunday, December 25, a total of 3.7 million Android devices were activated. This information comes from Google’s Android boss himself, Andy Rubin, via a tweet.

It wasn’t long ago that the same man reported that Android activations had reached 700,000 per day. So it looks like over the holiday weekend, those numbers shot up to almost twice and half as much.

No matter how anti-Android you may be, these numbers are great. Of course we assume that the daily activations number for this week has gone back down to around 700K. And those 3 million+ new devices joining the Android world over the weekend won’t have a very big influence in the overall numbers for this year, but nevertheless this is quite the achievement.

And before iOS fans get angry, know that the numbers for Apple’s mobile operating system were very close to Android’s. Analytics firm Flurry reports that iOS and Android activations taken together were at a 6.8 million level on Christmas Day (December 25). Strangely though, Flurry doesn’t break down how many of those ran which OS. And since Andy Rubin gave us a ‘full weekend’ number, calculating exactly how many iOS devices were sold on Sunday, and how many Androids, is impossible.

Still, even if we assume that the majority of those 3.7 million Android activations happened on Sunday, it’s clear that iOS either saw more activations, or wasn’t far behind Android. But there really are just too many variables to estimate actual numbers.

After all, let’s not forget that these numbers include smartphones and tablets (in Google’s case), and smartphones, tablets, and the iPod touch (for Apple). That also means it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about how smartphone market share may have been impacted by the holiday sales.

But we do have some comparisons to make. For example, on Christmas day 2010, 2.8 million iOS+Android devices were activated. Which means this year’s number is 140% higher. Also, the average number of activations between December 1 and December 20 was 1.5 million. Compared to that, the Christmas Day number represents a 353% growth.

The conclusion here is clear: smartphones and tablets are increasingly being received as holiday gifts.

Oh, and in case you’ve been wondering, app downloads, on both iOS and Android, were also at an all-time high during the Christmas weekend. Not at all unexpectedly, we might add, since those newly activated devices need some apps on them, don’t they? 242 million downloads have happened on Christmas Day, again on iOS and Android combined. That’s 125% more than the average number of downloads in the December 1-20 period, which was 108 million.

From Christmas through New Year’s Day, Flurry expects app downloads to reach an amazing 1 billion.

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  • Anonymous

    So I assume Kindle Fire activation numbers wouldn’t be included in the Google account registration numbers. So technically Android probably significantly outnumbered iOS activations.

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