Millions of smartphones and tablet computers made their way to new owners this holiday season, with both Apple and Google getting considerable piece of the action, latest reports said.

Basing on figures released by web metrics firm Flurry, combined activations of Android and iOS gadgets totalled 6.8 million units as of Christmas Day, easily beating out the number of activations recorded on the same day last year.

In a blog it posted on Tuesday, Flurry claimed that metric services it employs were capable of detecting devices activations, whether these were iPads, iPhone and Android smartphones or tablets.

The accuracy, the Flurry blog post said, is almost 100 percent and to date the firm claimed that devices activations from both mobile platforms have so far increased by 142 percent as against to the number of purchases last year, which reached 2.8 million on Christmas Day alone.

The days leading to Dec 25, Flurry said, recorded daily activations of at least 1.5 million units, with more than half of the numbers being owned by Google, according to Computerworld.

Counting Android activations from Christmas Eve through the end of the D-Day, Andy Rubin, Google senior vice president for mobile divisions, reported on Wednesday via Twitter that tablets and smartphones powered by Google's OS reached 3.7 million units.

"There were 3.7M Android devices activated on 12/24 and 12/25," Rubin declared.

He added that up to 700,000 Android gadgets were activated daily for the most past of December this year, a rise of more than 100 percent from the average of 300,000 units that Google said were bought and used everyday during the same period last year.

Apple, according to Computerworld, did not release its activation numbers for the holidays but judging from the figures issued by American telcos, close to three million iPhones have been activated during the last three months leading to September this year.

Overall, it is safe to assume that Apple has exceeded this year its sales figures December last year, which showed 7.3 million iPads and 16.2 million iPhones sold during the period, Computerworld said on its report.