Holiday Week 2012 Sees New iOS And Android Device Activations Rise To 50M Total, A 150% Increase

App analytics platform Flurry has released its annual look at how many new mobile devices came online during the holiday season, and the results show a dramatic change from the situation a year ago. Over 50 million iOS and Android devices were activated during the period between December 25 to December 31, versus just over 20 million devices last year. Users of those and existing devices downloaded 1.76 million apps, a 47 percent increase over the 1.2 billion app downloads during the 2011 holiday week.

Flurry previously reported that 17.4 million iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas day alone, an increase which likewise shattered previous records. The analytics firm also looked at the breakdown by country of downloads over the week, and found that as per usual, the U.S. accounted for the vast majority of downloads during the holiday period. China and the U.K. followed up in second and third place, and increases versus baseline download rates were more significant in countries including Canada, Germany and France where Christmas is more commonly celebrated than in some other high-performing nations like China and South Korea.

While Flurry doesn’t break out iOS vs. Android activation numbers, some analysis by Fortune combined with information from Android chief Andy Rubin suggests Apple may have accounted for more than half of the new activations this year, with the advantage coming from sales of its iPad and iPad mini tablet devices.