The interest in Android based mobile phones and tablets has been growing and according to a recent update by Google’s mobile chief Andy Robin, there are now 700,000 daily activations on the platform each day. The update was made on Google+, a social network launched by Google in July 2011.
The hike is explosive growth for Google promoted operating system which was pegged at 550,000 devices by Google chairman Eric Schmidt at a Le Web conference held in Paris two week back.
In his public update on Google+ Andy further mentioned that “…and for those wondering, we count each device only once (i.e. 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.”
According to http://www.9to5google.com, a web resource on Google, “to put it in perspective, 700,000 devices a day is almost 5 million every week, or 21 million a month, or over a mind-boggling 250 million a year.” These figures play a fast catch up to Apple’s iPhone which sold 4mn iPhone 4S within the first week of its launch.
It should be noted here that Apple’s generates bulk of its revenue through the sale of iPhones and ipad leading to iOS activations. However, Android is installed on various mobile and tablet devices through various vendors like HTC and Samsung reaching low cost emerging markets selling products at a cheaper rate compared to Apple’s iOS enabled services.
Google has been aggressively promoting Android and trying to fill in the void left after its mentor Steve Job’s demise. Andy Robin during a AsiaD conference held last week had remarked, “…the DNA in the people walking the halls at Apple is a very powerful combination of the arts and computer science, and I don’t think that’s changed with Steve’s passing. That combination of creativity and computer science, it’s still there. Apple will certainly miss Steve’s leadership, but now it’s time for the other guys to step up.”
Experts on the blogosphere believe that if Android is able to sustain the growth rate then daily activations by the end of next year could touch 2.5 million a day, amounting to at least 900 million activations a day. However, Google may not be making much money out of Android activations as they are routed through third party vendors, meanwhile Apple makes a healthy margin of more than 30% on its activations and sales.
This article of mine was originally published in Daily Post. You can also access it here
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