Right around the beginning of May at the I/O event, Google revealed its daily Android activation data, which turned out to be 400,000 Android activations daily. It’s been two months, and now Google’s Android boss Andy Rubin has an adjustment he’d like to make to the numbers. “There are now 500,000 Android devices activated every day, and it’s growing at 4.4% w/w,” tweeted Rubin this morning.
Just a couple weeks ago, Android’s market share dipped for the first time since 2009 according to IDC. However, that had a lot to do with Verizon’s iPhone 4 and less to do with a drop in Android sales. Clearly, Android devices are flying off the shelves and we don’t expect to see that change anytime soon.
Apple doesn’t announce daily iPhone activations the way Google does, so it’s difficult to compare. Here’s a little perspective, though: In the second quarter, from January to March, Apple activated 18.1 million iPhones worldwide. When we combine that with the sales figures from the three previous quarters, Apple sold a total of 108 million iPhones between March 2010 and March 2011. Divide that by 365 days and we’re left with just under 300,000 iPhones activated each day. According to those stats, the iPhone appears to be losing the war on Android—but remember, the iPhone is just one phone. iOS doesn’t appear on anything but Apple’s hardware, whereas Android comes in a number of different OEM flavors, so it’s almost unfair to draw a comparison.
[via Twitter]