According to a report by analytics firm Flurry, a whooping 1.2 billion apps were downloaded in the last week of December, creating a new record for plus billion downloads in a single week.

The increase comes as many people received new gadgets as Christmas gifts and the companies were offering attractive discounts on smartphones, tablets and other devices.

According to Flurry estimates, as many as seven million new Android devices and iPhones were activated on Christmas Day alone.

About half of the app downloads were recorded in the US with about 509 million downloads. A total of 99 million downloads were recorded in China and 81 million apps were downloaded by the users in the UK. Canada recorded 41 million downloads, while Germany and France each recorded 40 million, each.

Flurry believes that the level of downloads will become more standard in the coming future, according to Peter Farago, vice-president of marketing at Flurry.

He said, "Looking forward to 2012, Flurry expects breaking the one billion download barrier per week will become more commonplace. While iOS and Android growth continues to amaze, the market is still by all measures relatively nascent."

The analysis is based on its analytics tool which monitored downloads and usage of 140,000 apps in both Google’s Android Market and Apple’s App Store.