It will probably come as no surprise that more iOS and Android devices are activated on Christmas Day than on any other day of the year.

But the numbers are still rather impressive – over 17.4m mobile devices were activated on 25 December 2012, according to data from Flurry Analytics, more than any other day in history. Thats an increase of 332 per cent over the baseline of 4m, established between 1-20 December – and 2.5 times more than Christmas 2011.

Although normally smartphone activations outpace tablets by 4:1, on Christmas it was tablets which took a (narrow) majority, making up 51 per cent of device activations. Amazons Kindle did particularly well, with activations growing by several thousand per cent on Christmas Day.

A record number of app downloads followed the great unwrapping, with download volumes increasing by 112 per cent from the baseline to a total 328m.

Downloads peaked between 11am and 12 noon – presumably as the recipients of these new devices turned them on, connected them, and went on the the hunt for new apps. Download rates stayed about even for the rest of the day, at 20m every hour, before falling off after 8pm. Comparing with an average day in December, this is unusual – between 7-10pm is when downloads are typically hitting their daily peak.