An image of the popular video game Angry Birds is displayed on an iPod Touch. AFP
Angry Birds beat social networking app Facebook and VoIP calling app Skype to claim the coveted title.
The ranking comes courtesy of app store analyst Distimo, a company that tracks apps and provides worldwide mobile application store analytics.
"We matched apps together across all platforms, and also matched the free and paid versions of one app together for this analysis," said Distimo. "The most downloaded app of 2011 – when looking at the total free and paid download volumes of these matched apps combined – is Angry Birds."
Angry Birds was so popular with consumers that three different versions of the app appeared in the top ten chart for 2011.
In November Rovio announced that its Angry Birds games had been downloaded a total of 500 million times across various platforms.
Angry Birds also appeared at the top of Apple’s top ten paid iPhone apps of 2011 and was followed by Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds Seasons, Cut the Rope, Tiny Wings and Angry Birds Rio. Facebook was the most popular free iPhone app for the year according to Apple. Angry Birds Free, Skype and Twitter made it into the top ten free iPhone apps of the year list too.
Additional consumer favorites that made it into Distimo’s 2011 top apps chart include Google Maps by Google, Apple’s digital book reading app iBooks, fruit slashing game Fruit Ninja and Talking Tom Cat, an interactive animated cat that can repeat and record what you say.
Twitter’s microblogging on-the-go app nabbed the tenth spot on the chart.
Top 10 apps of 2011 by downloads:
Angry Birds by Rovio Mobile Ltd.
Facebook by Facebook, Inc.
Skype by Skype Software S.a.r.l
Angry Birds Rio by Rovio Mobile Ltd.
Google Maps by Google, Inc.
iBooks by Apple
Angry Birds Seasons by Rovio Mobile Ltd.
Fruit Ninja by Halfbrick Studios
Talking Tom Cat by Outfit7
Twitter by Twitter, Inc.