A new report by Flurry has shown that over 1.2 billion applications were downloaded worldwide in the last week of December.

The amazing figure was no doubt influenced by many new users splashing the cash after receiving a new mobile. Apple have been taking advantage of this initial app-spending spree for a long time by requiring new iPhone owners to register their mobile on iTunes before being able to use it.

As you'd expect the US accounted for the vast majority of the downloads with almost 50 per cent of the total (509,000,000). China came in second place with almost 100,000,000 app downloads, while the UK placed 3rd with just over 80,000,000 downloads.

With more and more devices being bought all the time application downloads will only continue to grow over time. Infact, Flurry are predicting that daily application downloads over 1 billion could become common-place in 2012.

Source