500,000 Android devices being activated each day, according to Google

"Google is now registering 500,000 Android device activations everyday," Andy Rubin, Vice President of Mobile at Google posted form his Twitter account recently. This Android adoption as expected is faster in the smartphone segment with tablets appearing to have only a fraction of these activations.

This new announcement from Rubin which comes just seven months after he tweeted about 300,000 Android phones activation every day, definitely spells good news for Android lovers. The numbers are a big jump from 60,000 activations in January 2010. According to Rubin the present trend indicates that the Android activations have been growing 4.4 percent week over week.

Unlike Android, Apple does not feed in any daily activation figures for its devices, however we could not have expected Apple not to boast of its numbers. The Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer was earlier heard telling the investors that "combining iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, Apple reached just under 189 million cumulative iOS device sales through the end of the March quarter."

CyberMedia Research shows that the smartphones market in India is likely to expand to over 10 million units in 2011. This spells good news for Android, which according to IDC is currently securing the top position in the smartphones segment.

Last year Android running on devices from several manufacturers hit the top position globally in the fourth quarter of 2010 and if this trend continues it is expected to occupy 44% of the smartphone market by 2015.

Google's strategy to join hands with various mobile manufacturers to launch the Android OS has been quite successful and the company is taking a similar approach to expand its market share in the tablet area as well. The recently launched Motorola Xoom in India comes with a tablet optimized version of Android known as Honeycomb. With growing tablet market and Android playing the preferred OS it's ability to boost its growth further are quite high.

At present there are approximately 300 different Android phones from various manufacturers boosting Android's growth, in contrast to Apple's six iPhones including the upcoming iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S.

Perhaps the only area where Android lags is the app section where Android market offers over 200,000 apps as opposed to iPhone's 425,000. We hope to see a change in this too, hopefully sooner than expected.