Apple Users Bought a Ton of Apps Over the Holidays

Santa was good to Apple last month. Cupertino announced Wednesday that 2015 was the biggest ever holiday season for the iTunes App Store.

Customers around the world helped Apple break records during the last two weeks of the year. In the days between Dec. 20 and Jan. 3, iOS users spent more than $1.1 billion on apps and in-app features, setting back-to-back weekly records for traffic and purchases.

Christmas Day 2015 marked the biggest day in App Store history, but the company then broke its own record on New Year's Day, when consumers spent more than $144 million.

"The App Store had a holiday season for the record books," Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a statement. He celebrated the contribution of developers, who have shared nearly $40 billion since the App Store's inception, more than one-third of which was generated within the last year.

Data from Flurry seems to back up Apple's stats. Overall mobile use among all platforms (including Android) in 2015 increased by 58 percent.

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"While the growth rate has declined (58 percent in 2015 compared to 76 percent in 2014 and 103 percent in 2013), it remains stunning as rates like these are rare in mature industries," Flurry said. "What was even more impressive is the majority of that growth rate came from existing users versus new users.