1.3 million Android activations per day: Google Chairman

The number of Android activations has reached an impressive 1.3 million per day, as per Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt. The numbers were announced by Schmidt at Motorola’s press event in New York yesterday. He added that the number of activations on tablet devices stood at 70,000, while the total number of Android users is now 480 million.

Clearly, Android is a popular platform, and the numbers only signify that it is growing at a fast pace. At the recently concluded Google I/O 2012 event, the search giant took the wraps off its Jelly Bean OS. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is a successor to the company’s last year’s operating software Android v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Over the months following it launch, there were numerous reports indicating the OS’ entry on a range of devices. The first device that will be graced by the update is the recently announced Google Nexus 7, which is the brand’s flagship tablet manufactured by Asus.

1.3 million Android activations per day

In June this year, Google’s Andy Rubin posted on Twitter that Android activations had reached over 9,00,000 devices each day.  Roughly converted, it amounted to 10 devices a second. Back in December 2010, Andy Rubin had tweeted that there were around 3,00,000 devices activated, which soon grew to about 5,00,000 devices per day till 28 June, 2011. In June 2012, our reports had mentioned that while it was great that Android was growing at such a rapid pace, it was disappointing that Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) adoption was poor, and nowhere close to what Gingerbread was in June 2010. Google’s ICS is a big improvement over its previous Gingerbread OS. Still, many Android users are yet to experience it, either because OEMs haven’t bothered rolling out the update or their phones aren’t compatible with it.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

In a recent McAfee Threats report, it had been indicated that miscreants were targeting popular consumer and business platforms such as Android OS, in addition to bringing personal computers under attack. The threat report further indicated that this quarter, much like the previous ones, saw new mobile malware being directed towards the Android platform, including SMS-sending malware, mobile botnets, spyware and destructive Trojans.