Photo credit: Yasu/Flickr.

More than a billion mobile apps were downloaded in the last week of December – the first time the milestone has been surpassed – according to leading mobile application analytics and data-powered advertising platform provider Flurry

The surge has been attributed to number of tablets and smartphone given as Christmas presents around the world – Flurry estimates that 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas Day, a 353 per cent increase on the daily average for the preceding 24 days.

The US accounted for close to half of the 1.2 billion holiday week downloads (509 million) with China (99 million) and the UK (81 million) the next most active nations. In total, the final week of 2011 saw at 60 per cent increase compared to the weekly averages for the rest of December.

Peter Fargo, the vice president of marketing for Flurry, wrote in his blog: “The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is filled with significantly elevated device activations and app downloads. For application makers, this holiday ‘power week’ is far more important than the run-up to Christmas itself.

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