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For the first time in a single week, more than a billion apps have been downloaded, according to a study.

Analytics firm Flurry said 1.2 billion apps were downloaded in the last week of December.

Activity was buoyed by the facts that many users received new devices for Christmas and firms offered discounted apps over the holiday period.

The US was responsible for nearly half of the downloads, followed by China and the UK.

With 81 million downloads, the UK easily surpassed Canada (41 million), Germany (40 million) and France (40 million).

It was beaten to second spot by China with 99 million downloads. The US was out ahead with 509 million.

Flurry thinks this level of download activity will become more standard.

"Looking forward to 2012, Flurry expects breaking the one billion download barrier per week will become more commonplace," the firm.

"While [Apple] iOS and [Google] Android growth continues to amaze, the market is still by all measures relatively nascent."

Unsurprisingly, Christmas proved a boom time for device makers. Flurry estimated that nearly seven million Android devices and iPhones were activated on Christmas Day.

Apple does not disclose such figures but Google confirmed that more than 3.7 million Android devices were activated over the Christmas weekend.