Christmas is always a good time for the gadget makers. Electronics of all kinds are consistently among the holiday season’s best-sellers. This is no less true for smartphones iPhones and Android phones always see higher-than-normal activation and app download rates. This year, however, is a little different. Android and iOS didn’t just have a good Christmas. They had their best Christmas ever. In data collected by two separate mobile app analytics companies, iOS and Android had record-breaking holiday weekends, in both device activations and app downloads.

The first study, conducted by Flurry, shows a 353% jump in new device activations (Android and iOS combined) on Christmas Day. While an average of 1.5 million devices were activated per day from December 1st through December 20th, a whopping 6.8 million devices were activated on Christmas Day.

Flurry found a similar – though rather less dramatic – jump in app downloads on Christmas Day, as well. While the December 1-20 average was 108 million app downloads per day, on the 25th it shot up 125% to 242 million app downloads.

Meanwhile, a similar study was conducted by http://www.localytics.com/blog/2011/holiday-ios-android-growth/. This study examined new device activations in twenty countries over the Christmas weekend – December 23-26. Localytics found that growth rates for the two platforms were virtually tied worldwide, but also found significant regional variations in which platform grew the most. Overall, Apple had roughly 12 times as many new device activations during the holiday weekend than it had in previous weekends. In the US, there were nearly 16 times as many activations. Android, on the other hand, had just under 12 times as many activations in the US. In Germany Apple also held the lead, though not by as much. In both South Korea and Sweden Android devices grew far more than iOS devices. In South Korea nearly 20 times as many Android phones were activated during the holiday weekend, while in Sweden it was just over 16 times.

Did Santa Claus bring you a new iPhone or Android phone this year? Let us know in the comments.