Flurry: App Store Sees Record Breaking Christmas, 50% Growth from November to December
As predicted here on MobileCrunch earlier this month, Apple rocked it this holiday season, and the early numbers are showing it. According to Flurry, the biggest mobile app analytics company …
Context & Ripple Effects
Flurry's numbers put hard measurement behind what had until now been anecdote: gifting season drives device activations, and new devices drive app downloads, producing a 50% jump in App Store volume from November to December. As the biggest mobile app analytics firm, Flurry effectively functions as the independent scoreboard for Apple's storefront economy.
The timing matters beyond the holidays: Apple has already asked developers to get their apps ready ahead of its confirmed January tablet demonstration, so the seasonal wave of newly activated devices and newly paid developers arrives just as the platform prepares to expand onto new hardware.
First-order effects
- Developers who shipped before the holidays capture the seasonal download surge directly, giving Apple a freshly capitalized studio base right when the company is asking them to prepare apps for the January tablet demo.
- Apple enters 2010 with a demonstrably larger installed base of app-ready devices, strengthening the App Store's position as its key differentiator over rival handset makers.
Second-order effects
- Competing platforms' app storefronts face pressure to match Apple's holiday-scale distribution; any rival lacking comparable catalog depth shows the gap most visibly during gifting-season activation spikes.
- Device makers and carriers get added incentive to time hardware launches against the December window, since activations translate immediately into app downloads and developer revenue that reinforce the platform.
Third-order effects
- Holiday download spikes look set to become an annual benchmark event, with third-party analytics firms like Flurry — not the platforms themselves — setting the narrative each December about which ecosystem won the season.
- If the pattern holds, app-store performance becomes a standing indicator cited alongside raw device sales when judging competitive position among mobile platforms.
The trend: App stores are maturing into seasonal consumer markets whose health gets scored publicly by independent analytics firms such as Flurry rather than by the platform owners themselves.