Christmas Period Saw 50 Million iOS And Android Activations

By Edwin Kee on 01/02/2013, filed in Home > CellPhones

Christmas Period Saw 50 Million iOS And Android Activations Santa’s sleigh must have been filled with mainly tablets and smartphones, as consumers activated a record-breaking figure of 17.4 million iOS and Android devices on Christmas Day itself, while the week that followed also breached previously impervious records, such as more than 50 million iOS and Android-powered smartphones and tablets being activated, alongside a mind boggling 1.76 billion apps downloaded. According to Peter Farago from mobile analytics firm Flurry, “The last week of 2012 was the largest week for both new device activations and app downloads in iOS and Android history.”

The very same week in the previous year before also did hold the record for number of downloads, although there were far fewer device activations. In fact, the number of activations on Christmas Day itself was less than half at a mere 6.8 million activations, going to show just how effective the marketing had been for folks in respective companies that churned out iOS and Android powered devices. Were you one of those who unwrapped a smartphone or tablet under the Christmas tree?

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Android: Android is the mobile operating system from Google. The software was originally built by a company called Android Inc, that was purchased by Google in 2005. From its modest debuts, Android has become a powerhouse that powers not only smartphones and tablet, but a host of other less high-profile devices and gadgets. Although Android is not a community-driven project, Google does release the source code as open-source under the Apache license. You can follow Ubergizmo on Android with Google Currents.

iOS: was once upon a time called iPhone OS, or "operating system", which is the software that provides all the basic device functionality and is the interface between the hardware and applications. iOS was introduced with the iPhone on January 9 2007, and it was originally not intended to be programmable by third parties. Steve Jobs had envisioned that developers could create Web Apps that would run in the browser. This changed less than one year after when the iPhone SDK (software development kit) was introduced in October 2007. Today, hundreds of thousands of apps have been created for this platform. iPhone OS became iOS on June 2010. Interestingly, both iPhone and iOS were former trademarks of Cisco, that Apple now uses under a license.

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