Angry Birds hits a million Android downloads in 24 hours

Angry Birds has become a runaway success on the iPhone, and is now gaining unrivaled success on Android as well. That’s because developer Rovio decided to make it available on Google’s operating system for free.

GetJar, the mobile store that provides apps to users across various platforms, hosted the free version of Angry Birds. The app costs 99 cents on the iTunes App Store as well as on Android’s official Android Market.

In just one day on GetJar, the casual game was downloaded more than a million times. That’s almost unheard of for a mobile game, free or not.

GetJar’s servers are able to handle a boatload of traffic but even they were overwhelmed, causing the entire service to crash. Even with the downtime, though, Rovio said it still reached that magical milestone.

It goes to show just how popular Angry Birds is, and also just how many gamers there are on Android. The Android Market is prolifically devoid of quality gaming content, or the games that do come out only arrive after they’ve been on the iPhone side of things for several months.

Unfortunately Rovio didn’t make any money from all those downloads, but it did create even more attention that it already had. So if you’re an Android owner, get to the GetJar mobile site and download Angry Birds for free while you still can.