In Larry Page’s note moments ago about Andy Rubin stepping down as head of Android to be replaced by Sundar Pichai, he also provided an update on Android device activations: there are now 750 million of them, across smartphones and tablets from 60 hardware makers. This an update on the 500 million figure noted in September 2012.
From Page’s note:
Fast forward to today. The pace of innovation has never been greater, and Android is the most used mobile operating system in the world: we have a global partnership of over 60 manufacturers; more than 750 million devices have been activated globally; and 25 billion apps have now been downloaded from Google Play. Pretty extraordinary progress for a decade’s work.
And here’s a visualization of how Android has grown, courtesy of Benedict Evans.
By many estimates from analysts, Google’s Android is currently the world’s biggest smartphone platform. The most recent figures from Gartner, for example, put it at 70% of the market in terms of recent devices sold. Activations are a slightly more nebulous stat, however, because, as Evans points out, they don’t include, for example, Android devices sold in countries where Google services might get used, such as China. And they don’t count secondary-owners of devices, as you may sometimes get in developing markets.
750 million Android activations implies an active base of somewhere around 675 million, Evans says. “Plus China, of course.” As a point of comparison, iOS is at about 400 million.
Analyst Horace Dediu, based on today’s 750-million figure and historical growth, predicts that Android will reach 1 billion activations by mid-August 2013.
Last week, Google provided an update on how ebooks and music have been progressing on the platform: there are now over 5 million ebooks and 18 million songs available on Google Play, one year on after it got rebranded from its previous name of Android Market.
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
Andrew Rubin is a technology pioneer, co-founder and former CEO of both Danger Inc. and Android. He is currently SVP of Mobile at Google, where he is reported to be overseeing the development of Android, an open-source operating system for smartphones. Rubin got his start as an engineer at Apple Inc., and a later spin-off General Magic, where he worked on Magic Cap, an operating system and interface for hand-held devices. When Magic Cap failed to be successful, Rubin and...
Larry Page was Google’s founding CEO and grew the company to more than 200 employees and profitability before moving into his role as president of products in April 2001. He continues to share responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations with Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin. The son of Michigan State University computer science professor Dr. Carl Victor Page, Larry’s love of computers began at age six. While following in his father’s footsteps in academics, he became an honors graduate from the...
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