Christmas Day has seen a spike in mobile application downloads for the past couple of years, and that didn’t change in 2013, according to Flurry. Christmas Day app downloads grew by 91% compared to the first 21 days of December, reaching a “record-breaking level.” However, in what Flurry believes portends a “market maturation,” the extent of the Christmas Day spike decreased from the previous couple of years, and app downloads were up a relatively modest 11% from a year earlier.
By comparison, app downloads grew by 90% year-over-year on Christmas Day 2012. Similarly, while the average number of daily downloads for the month of December grew by 25% year-over-year in 2013, that was down from 97% growth the year before.
Flurry attributes the drop-off to deeper mobile penetration rates in large markets (see here for an example) and a smaller spike in new device activations than in years past. (Flurry separately reported that new activations grew by 63% on Christmas Day over the average December day – down from more than a four-fold increase last year.) Moreover, mobile growth is now primarily occurring in countries which are less likely to celebrate Christmas Day.
In terms of the types of applications that saw the biggest download spikes this past Christmas Day, Flurry sees little difference from prior years. Games and social media applications continued to have the biggest increases over the December baseline, although this time lifestyle apps grew more slowly than media apps.