21 December, 2011
By Adnan
An interesting statistic has been revealed earlier today by Android Chief Andy Rubin. In a tweet Google’s head honcho of Android revealed that the internet search giant is currently activating Android devices around the world at the tune of 700,000 devices every day which tantamounts to roughly 5 million global Android activations every single week.
Naysayers argued on the method of counting, as they wanted to know whether or not Google counts Android upgrades as well as pre-owned Android devices so that it can tout such a massive figure of activations per day. However to clear the confusion, Andy Rubin revealed Google’s method of counting activations in a detailed post on Google Plus:
…and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don’t count re-sold devices), and “activations” means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service.
So basically, there are 700,000 NEW Android devices being activated every single day around the world. It goes without saying that Android is perhaps the only mobile platform left in the market that can stack up against Apple as a true competitor in the market. With each passing day, Android devices are gaining popularity in the market particularly because of the open-ness of this platform as compared to Apple’s strictly grandfathered iOS platform.
Apart from the issue of a mobile platform being open or close, the fact remains that Google progress primarily because it licenses its Android platform where Apple and only Apple can make iOS devices. On the other hand, there are dozens of manufacturers that are making better and better Android devices by learning from mistakes made in the past. It took quite a while for Android to take off but now it looks as if sky is the limit for this little green robot.
Kudos to Google and its manufacturing partners. Android surely is giving Apple a run for its money!
