• Christmas 2012 saw record iOS and Android device activations, while industry reports show App Store downloads soared by 87 percent.
• Both the Apple App Store and Google Play saw healthy revenue gains in 2012, with more monetization and potential for global growth ahead in 2013.
• 2012 was (finally!) the year of mobile – from the launch of the iPhone 5 to Android device supremacy. But some say we’ll look back on 2013 as the year of the tablet.
• Will Apple unveil a new iPhone in 2013? This is just one of many predictions industry experts are making for the new year.

TheNextWeb reports that Christmas Day 2012 saw a record 17.4 million iOS and Android device activations – or 2.5x more than Christmas Day 2011 – according to Flurry. And new stats from Distimo indicate that daily downloads in the Apple App Store increased by 87 percent on Christmas Day, while revenues increased by 70 percent. This data “supports the common idea that developers should make a point to take advantage of the holiday season by updating and tweaking their apps in the weeks leading up to the 25th of December,” writes TheNextWeb’s Emil Protalinski. The 2012 holidays also marked a turning point in the history of mobile marketing, with more campaigns and shopping conducted on smartphones and tablets than in years past. If you’re interested in learning which holiday mobile marketing strategies worked well this year (and which ones didn’t), we invite you to join our free Mobile Marketer webinar on Jan. 24 – register here.

TechCrunch reports on the latest findings from ABI Research which show that mobile apps hit 43.6 billion downloads worldwide between September 2011 and September 2012, with Apple’s App Store leading the pack. In fact, all the app stores felt the boom of the mobile economy during 2012. Daily revenue in the Apple App Store grew 21 percent in 2012, while Google Play’s app revenue increased 43 percent, reported Steve Smith of MediaPost. Android’s operating system also realized remarkable gains in the latter half of 2012 with its improved user experience and scale of penetration. Device-wise, international growth also surged – the iPhone in Japan, China, and Russia; and Android devices in Korea, Japan, and France.

While pundits have been proclaiming "the year of mobile" for a few years, now, 2012 actually lived up to those expectations in several ways. But what will be shaking the industry in 2013? Greg Sterling of Marketing Land predicts that a year from now, we’ll look back on 2013 as “the year of the tablet.” According to a recent Nielsen survey, the gadget children and adults desired most this holiday season was the iPad, and many unwrapped Apple’s tablet Christmas morning. In fact, of the 17.4 million devices activated Dec. 25, 51 percent were tablets.

And what will make headlines in 2013? Will it be a new iPhone from Apple? A new flavor version from Android? Will Motorola make its first official flagship device for Google? Dan Rowinski of ReadWrite makes some bold predictions on what’s to come for mobile in 2013, especially after a year of tremendous industry growth.

With the iPhone 5’s reported release less than one month away, iPhone prices and sales have dropped, while reports about the device’s new features have continued swirling. According to new industry research, Apple’s iPad has continued its market dominance. And, as we say goodbye to the 2012 Summer Olympics, it’s clear that mobile earned “gold” as the channel delivering the greatest online audience engagement during the Games.

Retailers are marketing down current iPhone models to make way for the speculated new iPhone 5. According to AllThingsD, retailers, including Best Buy and Target, are selling iPhones for much less than they have in the past. Best Buy is retailing the eight-gigabyte iPhone 4 for $49, and Target is offering the Verizon and AT&T versions of the iPhone 4S for $179. Apple stores are even matching those prices, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile as anticipation builds ahead of the iPhone launch, smartphone sales have stalled. According to analyst firm Gartner, global sales dipped 2.3 percent in Q2 to 419 million units worldwide, down from 428 million the same period last year. iPhone sales dropped nearly 13 percent from Q1, but increased 46 percent from 2011. “High-profile smartphone launches from key manufacturers such as the anticipated Apple iPhone 5, along with Chinese manufacturers pushing 3G and preparing for major device launches in the second half of 2012, will drive the smartphone market upward,” said Anshul Gupta, Gartner principal research analyst, to FierceMobileContent.

In other Apple news, the iPad continued its reign as king of tablets. According to research firm HIS iSuppli, Apple secured nearly 70 percent of the tablet market in Q2 with 17 million shipments worldwide. Samsung took second place with 9.2 percent for 2.3 million shipments, Amazon finished third with 4.2 percent and Asus logged fourth with 2.8 percent. The figures didn’t include Google’s Nexus 7. “Apple’s major media tablet rivals, Google and Microsoft, hope to challenge Apple in the second half of the year, but will be facing formidable headwinds with no sign that the market leader is backing off of its aggressive strategy in the market,” said Rhoda Alexander, director for tablet and monitor research for HIS, in a CNET piece.

With the Summer Olympics now closed, new statistics bestowed mobile the gold medal for online audience engagement. According to Alex Balfour, head of new media for the London 2012 Olympics, 60 percent of visits to the official London2012.com site and apps came from mobile devices. The ratio was so high because the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games had several apps and websites on the market, reported paidContent.

This week, Apple announced its third quarter earnings. Though the company missed Wall Street’s lofty expectations this time around, Apple still moved an enormous amount of iDevices over the last three months, TechCrunch reports.

The tech giant reported revenue of $35 billion and earnings of $8.8 billion (or $9.32 per share). That was up from the $28.57 billion in revenue and profits of $7.31 billion (or $7.79 per share) Apple reported last year during the same quarter. 

Apple once again saw strong sales for the iPhone – its best-selling device in Q3. The company sold 26 million iPhones during the quarter, up 28 percent from the same quarter last year. Additionally, the iPad saw a killer quarter, with a sales increase from 11.8 million in Q2 to a whopping 17 million in Q3.

"We're thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter," said Apple’s Tim Cook said in a statement on announcement day. "We've also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion [Wednesday], and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we've got in the pipeline."

According to Huffington Post, Apple’s average selling prices for its various devices declined to levels last seen in 2010. This was largely due to the fact that consumers opted for less expensive device versions in Q3, instead of upgrading to the latest models.

Additionally in Q3, the company “increasingly relied on sales from large emerging markets such as China, where the Apple name holds even more cachet than it does here,” observes CNET’s Josh Lowensohn.

The Future of Privacy Forum released an encouraging new study this week indicating that app developers are becoming more privacy savvy on both Google and Apple operating systems. And as the Apple App Store celebrates its birthday week, an industry expert compares the App Store’s first four years to the early commercial Web. In international mobile news, breaking reports show that China has pre-empted Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5 launch.

The New York Times is reporting on a new study from the Future of Privacy Forum, released this week. According to the study, 61.3 percent of app developers have privacy policies in place, detailing what data is collected and how it is used. The study revealed that the number of free apps with a privacy policy on iOS grew significantly from 40 percent to 84 percent between September 2011 and June 2012, while those for Google's Android operating system increased from 70 percent to 76 percent during that same period. The think tank also urged app developers to provide “enhanced notice” if apps collect information users might not expect and to give users control about what they share. AdWeek has more on the study.

“When Apple debuted its App Store four years ago, even the most bullish analysts and enthusiastic fanboys could not have fathomed how iOS apps would so quickly change our lives,” writesAppolicious’ managing editor, Brad Spirrison, in a contributed Huffington Post column. In this piece, he examines the parallels between what the Apple App Store has done for mobile media consumption and what Netscape’s browser-based Internet did for the commercial Web in the mid-90s. He continues on to say that today, between iOS, Android and Windows, there are nearly 1.5 million apps available for download, each competing fiercely for users. This underscores the continued discoverability challenges mobile app developers face as the app stores continue to grow exponentially each year.

And as speculation and anticipation continues to mount around the upcoming iPhone 5 launch, opportunistic sellers in China are already accepting pre-orders for the new model, reports Fox Business. These pre-orders come with mock-up pictures and “guesstimate” technical specifications, though Apple has remained tight-lipped, not revealing any specifications, details or pricing to the public. According to the current rumor mill, the new model will have a bigger screen than previous models, and the phone's voice recognition software, Siri, will have more powerful functions.