There have been some interesting reports in line with mobile usage over the holidays. First off, location-based mobile media company, JiWire, analyzes the behavior of its on-the-go audience in its public Wi-Fi network. The findings reveal that the Kindle Fire rocks connectivity in the US, growing by 3.4 times, while iPad connectivity shrinks by 4.5 percent. Denver leads the cities connecting with Kindle Fire for post-holiday, increasing by 400 percent, while the iPad only saw an increase of 152 percent. Los Angeles tails Denver with 158 percent increased connectivity using the Kindle Fire, while iPad connectivity grew by 24 percent.

However, that doesn’t mean Kindle Fire surpasses iPad in all in all aspects of connectivity. The iPad still tops the charts when it comes to tablet devices using public W-Fi in the US and UK during pre-holiday and post-holiday periods, with 91.5 percent and 94.2 percent market share, and 87 percent and 91 percent respectively.

Indeed, today’s digital age may actually be the post-PC era, as smartphones stand on the level with laptops in terms of connectivity. As for the holiday season, there are significant differences between connectivity before and after the holiday week. During pre-holiday, 51.3 percent of users connected from laptops while on 38.8 percent from smartphones but on post-holiday, the figures inverted with 38.5 percent connectivity coming from laptops and 50.8 percent from smartphones.

New devices activate holiday cheer

A report released by mobile analytics firm Flurry claims that there has been 1 billion Android and iOS apps downloaded over the holiday, while there were 20 million Android and iOS devices activated during the same time frame. During the holiday, Facebook also achieved a new milestone of 300 million monthly active users on mobile devices, dominantly from iOS and Android devices.

“Quite unsurprisingly, these are dominated by the two platforms that have traction, iOS and Android. As Techcrunch pointed out a few days ago, Android has now passed iOS in DAUs [daily active users], though Apple has passed the round 100m MAU [monthly active user] figure,” says Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis.

Angry Birds also wallowed in the success of its 6.5 million downloads on Christmas Day. The figure includes both free and paid versions of the game, as well as expansion Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio. This is a major leap from last year’s 2 million Android and iOS downloads.

“We’re really excited to have such a massive number of new people get acquainted with Angry Birds over the holidays,” says Ville Heijari, a spokesman for Rovio.

Social gaming affected by mobile success?

As for social media gaming, the holiday hit some of them pretty hard. Electronic Art’s “The Sims Social” lost 1.2 million users; Zynga’s “Empire & Allies” ddown 1.2 monthly users, and “CastleVille” down 900,000. Meanwhile, classics like Zynga’s “Words with Friends” and “FarmVille” increased by 1.3 million and 800,000 million in that order. PC, console and mobile gaming also peaked as console gaming systems and games were popular gifts.