Google's Andy Rubin announced via Google+ that the company is
now activating 700,000 Android devices every day.
"There are now over 700,000 Android devices activated every
day," said Rubin in a post to his Google+ account Tuesday. "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."
It wasn't that long ago--October, to be specific--Google told us
the daily activation rate was 550,000. It appears as though there's
been a pretty big jump in activation numbers this fall, and the
rate has doubled since April, when Google said that the rate was
350,000 daily activations.
To put the 700,000 daily activations figure into perspective,
29,000 people are buying new Android devices every hour, or 486
every minute, or 8 every second.
At this rate, Google may be activating one million Android
devices each day before the middle of 2012. It is possible Google
will sell 250 million Android devices in 2012. That's a lot of
devices. (Keep in mind, this is a worldwide number, and isn't
specific to the United States.)
Apple's iPhone remains Google's next-closest competitor, but it
pales in comparison.
If we take the most recently released quarterly numbers from
Apple, we know that it sold 17.07 million iPhones during its fiscal
fourth quarter. Divide that by 90 days in the quarter and you get a
relatively paltry 189,000 daily iPhone activations.
The big caveat here is, of course, that iPhone sales slowed down
dramatically in the May-October period as people waited for Apple
to announce the iPhone 5. Of course, Apple didn't announce the
iPhone 5, and instead launched the iPhone 4S. iPhone sales picked
up again in October once the iPhone 4S reached store shelves--but
not in time to give us more reliable and up-to-date daily
activation numbers.
Even so, Google is killing Apple, no question, and Apple will
likely never catch back up with Android.
With Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich available on the Samsung
Galaxy Nexus, interest in Android will only continue to swell.
Source: InformationWeek USA