iPhone and iPad sales: Two Christmas Day data points

1) 17 million iOS and Android devices activated; 2) App Store downloads up 87%

Click to enlarge.

FORTUNE -- Given the blow-out iPhone and iPads sales Apple (AAPL) reported in its 2011 holiday quarter -- up 128% and 111% year over year, respectively -- the Wall Street analysts we've polled expect that breakneck growth to slow considerably in the quarter that ends Saturday. They think Apple's Q1 2013 is going to be what they call a "tough compare," and they're looking, on average, for year-over-year unit sales growth of 28% for the iPhone and 48% for the iPad.

But some of the data coming in from holiday sales suggest that those estimates may be too conservative. In particular:

• Flurry Analytics reports that 17 million Apple iOS and Google (GOOG) Android devices were activated on Christmas Day, up 250% from 2011. Flurry, unfortunately, doesn't tell us how many of those were Androids and how many were Apples. 
• Distimo's data was more platform specific. It reported a "very appy" Christmas Day that saw downloads on Apple's App Store increase 87% year over year. While less than the 3X increase Distimo reported in 2011, it suggests a bigger bump in unit sales that the Street is expecting.

One more stat, this one from Chitka, which measured ad impressions from various manufacturers' tablets in the pre-Christmas week of Dec. 8-14. Their data are shown, as usual, on a scale of 100 iPad impressions. "Eighty-seven percent of the tablet web traffic in North America is generated by iPad," is how Chitika's Gabe Donnini interprets the chart below. VentureBeat's John Koetsier puts it in starker terms:

"For every 100 web pageviews on an iPad, a Kindle gets 5, a Galaxy gets 3, and a Surface gets 0.22"

Click to enlarge.

Posted in: Android, Apple, Chitka, Distimo, Flurry, Google, iPad, iPhone

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• Apple vs. Android: Who won the X-mas bake-off? (update)

  If you count the iPad and iPod touch, it looks like iOS by about 1.6 million units

  Without a press release from Apple (AAPL) crowing about their Christmas sales, we're forced to rely on data from a mobile analytics firm and tweets from a Google (GOOG) senior vice president to make some rough guesses.

  Here's what we know:

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  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 28, 2011 7:24 AM ET
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  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 24, 2011 6:07 AM ET
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• Today in Tech: Google + tops 10 million users

  Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

  * One third-party reported it, but now it's official: Google+ grew to 10 million in two weeks, with users sharing more than 1 billion items being shared daily. "We're only at 1% of what's possible," Google CEO Larry Page said during this week's conference call. "Google's just getting MORE

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  The pie chart at right, published Friday by the mobile analytics firm Flurry, illustrates just how rapidly the platforms that brought Mario to a generation of videogamers are shrinking.

  It shows Nintendo's share of the multibillion dollar U.S. portable software game business collapsing in the space of a year from 70% to 57% while Apple's (AAPL) iOS and MORE

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  Of 3,000 mobile app projects begun in the past 90 days, 67% were for iPhones, 22% for iPads

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  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 2, 2010 10:26 AM ET
  Posted in: Android, Apple, BlackBerry, Flurry, Google, iPad, iPhone, RIM