This article is more than 1 year old

Christmas stockings attract a Touch or two

An Apple under every tree

Apple's iPod Touch was the Christmas gift of choice this year, if an apparent 1000 per cent jump in application sales in anything to judge by.

On December 25 sales of applications to iPod-touting customers jumped by one thousand per cent, and the total figures for December are already 51 per cent up on November when the iPhone is included.

The figures come from Flurry Analytics, a company that provides a tiny client developer's drop into applications in exchange for access to raw data. This lets the rest of us see how popular the iTunes store was on Christmas Day as millions of teenagers unwrapped their iPod Touch players and rushed to download farting applications before their peers.

MobileCrunch quotes Flurry marketing veep Peter Farago, who notes that iPod Touch owners are now downloading more applications than iPhone owners. He suggests this can be attributed to the teen demographic that got an iPod Touch from Santa Claus.

Just before Christmas Flurry announced it is to merge with Pinch Media, a competitor doing much the same thing. The combined entity reckons it will have reporting clients installed on more than 80 per cent of iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android devices, giving the company almost as much information as Apple itself.

A straw poll at El Reg towers reflects the popularity of Apple's MP3 player as a Christmas gift. Several nephews and nieces got a Touch this year, along with more-elderly relatives, as the device becomes entirely mainstream.

Millions of applications does not necessarily translate into millions of dollars - many of those iPod Touch players will be clenched in hands too young to own a credit card, and the vast majority of applications downloaded will be freebies. But it indicates that Apple sold an awful lot of hardware this Christmas and that's what Cupertino really cares about. ®

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