Some 6.5 Million People Found Angry Birds in Their Stockings

Buoyed by a flurry of smartphone activations, Rovio said it saw a record 6.5 million Christmas Day downloads for its Angry Birds franchise of games.

That’s nearly the number of total smartphone activations estimated to have happened over Christmas.

“We’re really excited to have such a massive number of new people get acquainted with Angry Birds over the holidays — we have exciting new releases lined up for 2012, and can’t wait to introduce them to the public,” Rovio’s Ville Heijari told AllThingsD.

That total combines downloads for three games — Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio — and includes a mix of paid and free downloads.

The number is up from Christmas 2010, when the company saw two million downloads across iOS and Android.

It was an appy Christmas overall, with Flurry suggesting more than a billion mobile programs were downloaded during the final week of 2011.