Angry Birds Downloaded 6.5 Million Times On Christmas

When someone gets a smartphone, it seems that Angry Birds is one of the first things they download. Developer Rovio says that Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio racked up 6.5 million downloads on Christmas Day.

The total includes both paid and free downloads. It's a record for the franchise. By comparison, the Angry Birds series was downloaded two million times on Christmas 2010 on iOS and Android devices.

"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 vice president of franchise development Ville Heijari told AllThingsD.

In Angry Birds, players use a slingshot to fling birds at structures made of various materials. The objective is to eliminate the pigs inside or on top of these structures. Each of the birds you fling has a different ability. For example, white birds drop eggs that explode on impact.

Angry Birds was first released in December 2009. Its total downloads passed the 500 million mark in November of 2011.

While Angry Birds did manage to rack up an impressive amount of downloads on Christmas, it's far from the only app that new phone owners are grabbing. Mobile app analytics company Flurry estimates that over a billion programs were downloaded to phones in the last week of 2011.