App analytics firm Flurry said that 1.2 billion apps were downloaded in the “power week” from 25 December to 31 December 2011, with a “record-breaking” 242 million apps downloaded on Christmas Day alone. This compares with a weekly average of 750,000 earlier in the month.

This was driven by the activation of 6.8 million iOS and Android devices on Christmas Day, another new record. During the week up to New Year’s Eve, more than 20 million smart devices were activated. In comparison, for the first 20 days of December the daily activation average was 1.5 million, while the previous single day record, 2.8 million activations, was Christmas Day 2010 – indicating 140 percent year-on-year growth.

The company said that looking forward to 2012, it expects breaking the one billion download per week barrier will “become more commonplace”.

Flurry noted that after 25 December to 31 December, the busiest week for downloads was 18 December to 24 December – the period which immediately preceded it. Some 857 million downloads were recorded for these seven days.

During the peak Christmas holiday sales period, the US dominated the download charts, accounting for 509 million of the 1.2 billion downloads (42.3 percent of the total). This was followed by China with 99 million, and the UK with 81 million.

The company noted that the celebration of Christmas as a holiday impacted download performances in markets other than China, where it is less celebrated – Flurry said that markets such as the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Australia, Italy, Spain and Mexico “over-indexed against largely non-Christian countries of China, South Korea and Japan.”