Google Android boss Andy Rubin just let the world know that more than half a million Android devices are activated every day. That number includes smartphones and tablets and comes just about 2 months after Google announced that more than 100 million devices have been activated over the last few years.
The activation number is a little tricky, because it doesn’t tell you how many devices are actually in use. But if you wanted to pretend that nobody ever discarded or replaced an Android device, at the current rate about 6.7 billion Android devices would be activated in another 37 years — that would be enough devices for every single person on earth today. Of course that number is also kind of meaningless, both because the population will be larger in 37 years and because the Android growth rate is actually continuing to accelerate. Oh yeah, and because I doubt we’ll ever reach a point where every person on earth actually has an Android device.
Still, half a million per day is a pretty big number for a mobile platform that first hit the streets in late 2008.
via The Next Web
You wrote:
“Still, half a million per day is a pretty big number for a mobile platform that only launched in late 2007.”
I know you meant well, but that sentence is misleading if not simply disingenuous.
Tho it’s true Google (and OHA partners) announced the Android platform in November, 2007, the first Android-powered phone (HTC’s G1, aka “Dream”) hit the market in September of 2008.
In fact, the two events are separated by more than 10 months. That’s a critical distinction – one which I suspect most readers would not appreciate without prior knowledge of Android’s history.
Good catch. I actually was just going off of memory instead of taking a second to confirm the date. I’ll fix the post.