14 DAY TRIAL // Android is big business for Google. Not necessarily in terms of revenue, although that is becoming significant as well, but in terms of units sold. Google boasts that 550,000 new devices are registered each day.
That's 550,000 new people that are getting an Android phone and using Google services every day. Granted, some are swapping old Android phones for newer ones, but that still leaves a lot of people.
In fact, Google says that there are now 135 million registered Android devices to date. There were only 100 million at Google I/O, a couple of months ago.
What's even more impressive than the actual numbers is the growth rate, these numbers are significantly higher today than they were a few weeks or a few months ago.
"We have tremendous new businesses being viewed as 'crazy.' Android: We actually have a new metric to report of 550,000 Android Devices activated a day! That’s a HUGE number even by Google’s standards," CEO Larry Page said in the earnings call with investors after revealing the second quarter's financial results.
Only a couple of weeks ago, Android chief Andy Rubin was boasting that half a million devices were being activated each day. It's now seeing ten percent more every day, a 4.4 percent week over week growth.
And this is for the most popular smartphone operating system already. The numbers are truly impressive, but the fact is, it's not just Android that's growing, it's the entire smartphone market.
More and more people are abandoning their regular phones for smarter ones and the choice is limited, either an expensive iPhone or an equally expensive, less expensive or much less expensive Android device. It all comes down to variety, Android devices are flooding the market with no real competitors in the lower price ranges.
That said, Apple is said to be preparing a less expensive iPhone which would make the fight a lot more interesting. In the meantime, Google can enjoy its success, unless the patent trolls don't ruin it all, of course.