700,000 Android devices activated each day

[+] arron61|14 years ago|reply

Andy Rubin: "...and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, 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."

So it seems like a new device only.

[+] moocow01|14 years ago|reply

Does this take into account people who are upgrading to a new Android phone from an old one? If not it could really impact the metrics if one is looking at this as a measurement of new entrants into the Android ecosystem.

[+] jamesaguilar|14 years ago|reply

I wonder why they don't just use a word that people understand.

[+] divtxt|14 years ago|reply

Android is taking off here in India because it's creeping into the low-end. I'm sure the same thing is happening in most countries.

Last week I got a Samsung Galaxy Y. It's small, sturdy, has swype input and has great battery life. Gmail, reader & facebook over 3G or wifi.

The price: just $140!!!

I used to try high-end phones and then go back to low-end Nokias. Now, I'm not going back to my $40 Nokia and I'm definitely not going to pay $700+ for an iPhone that won't even have Swype.

edit: extra sentence

[+] tluyben2|14 years ago|reply

A lot of people are buying, just for the hell of it, Androids from Chinese outlets like Aliexpress as well. Those are not brands, but they are really cheap; so cheap you don't care at all if they break/fall (I don't agree with that sentiment, but I know a lot of people do). There are Android 2.3 pads there for $50 (not to mention hackable Linux phone watches). Now if only you could upgrade Android without restrictions.

And, while there still is crisis everywhere, I see people selling them here on markets; they buy them from Alibaba in sets of 20-50 and sell them on a sunday market to 'fortunate but not as fortunate to pay for a $140 phone'.

Edit: added Linux phone watch, disclaimer; never tried one, but a friend did and he says it's great fun for tinkering.

[+] azakai|14 years ago|reply

It's remarkable the legal lengths to which Apple and Microsoft are going to try to stop Android, but it looks like they are having little or no effect.

Lawyers get paid, some silly patents get worked around, but that's about it it seems.

[+] thought_alarm|14 years ago|reply

It's all about the carriers.

A guy walks into an AT&T store and wants an iPhone. He'll get an iPhone.

A guy walks into an AT&T store and wants a Windows Phone. He'll probably be talked into an Android.

A guy walks into an AT&T store without a clue. He'll walk out with an Android. It's the most profitable for the carrier, because it's perhaps the only smartphone left that grants the carrier full control over how it's configured and what software is bundled.

Patent attacks against individual Android manufacturers and individual models are irrelevant. Your carrier will always have a wall of indistinguishable Android phones for the next customer to choose from.

[+] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply

Not to mention that it seems most of Microsoft's patents are worthless when they are tested in Court. 6 out of 7 of, which I assume are some of their best patents if they used them in the lawsuit, have been declared invalid.

http://mediacenter.motorola.com/content/detail.aspx?ReleaseI...

If the manufacturers currently paying Microsoft patent fees man up and take Microsoft to Court, they could break free, too, or at the very least pay 7 times less of what they are paying now, if their other patents are just as worthless.

But seriously, how could anyone even think the current patent system is even close to being fine when most of the tested patents in Court are being declared invalid? (I believe Apple also got about 18 out of 20 of their patents invalidated in Europe). This is ridiculous.

[+] admiralpumpkin|14 years ago|reply

I think you've wrongly inferred motives in both cases.

MS, as always, is about the money. There have been many articles recently suggesting that MS might be making more money off of Android than Google itself. As proof, see willingness to license.

Apple, as always, is about the art. Right or wrong, they are offended that anyone would use their creation. They will litigate out of principle. As proof, see (general) unwillingness to license.

To be clear, I'm not at all addressing the issue of whether or not the patents are valid, or whether patents in general are good; I'm just ascribing motivations.

[+] rimantas|14 years ago|reply

  > It's remarkable the legal lengths to which Apple and
  > Microsoft are going to try to stop Android,

Microsoft is making money with each Android phone sold, so I am not so sure what legal lengths are you talking about.

[+] codex|14 years ago|reply

Android is the new Nokia: the lowest common demonimator phone; the default. Or, to cross realms, it's the new Windows. While Apple costs carriers a pretty penny, carriers get a share of the advertising revenue from Android based web searches, and they can preinstall whatever carrier apps they want on their Android devices, unlike on the iPhone.

[+] bad_user|14 years ago|reply

Don't get me wrong, but this argument sounds like sour grapes. Another way to look at it is that Android is an open platform that people install on anything they want. And if it's open for users, then it's also open for carriers, which goes without saying.

Also, if low common denominator phones are anything like my Galaxy S, then Apple is screwed ;)

[+] rjd|14 years ago|reply

Does anyone else look at these numbers and instantly think of the shear volume of waste?

With iphones thats a well over million per day. With most people already owning a phone thats a lot of superseded devices to deal with. Thats a lot of chemical waste...

[+] cryptoz|14 years ago|reply

I think the vast majority of these users are probably on their first smartphone. For example, Android is huge in African countries where families who've never owned a computer are starting to sign up for cheap 3G plans with cheap Android phones.

I bet there's a lot of waste, but I also bet that it's nothing compared to the waste from old American cars driving around and polluting. Think of what these new cheap smartphones mean for humanity - the ability for entire populations to pop on the internet that never have before, read wikipedia, etc. Surely that is worth the waste it is producing.

[+] tintin|14 years ago|reply

This is exactly the reason why I keep my mobile as long as possible (years). It is a shame to see all the waste we ship to counties like Ghana and Nigeria and call it recycling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste

[+] krashidov|14 years ago|reply

I've been thinking about this a lot recently and it seems like a big concern to me. Ideally, consumer products should last a person for more than a couple of years but with smartphones the product life is about two years.

I wonder how long we can go at this rate until our rare-earth minerals start reaching alarming levels.

[+] jonknee|14 years ago|reply

There are 4.6 billion mobile phone owners. A million a day isn't a lot.

[+] byoung2|14 years ago|reply

I wonder what number of distinct users is. Once you go Android, you tend to stay there. Between my wife and me, for example, we have had 6 Android phones (1 HTC Hero, 2 HTC Evo 4Gs, 3 HTC Amaze 4Gs), and 5th Android tablet (2 Samsung Galaxy Tabs, 1 Asus Transformer, 1 Acer Iconia, and 1 T-Mobile G-Slate). I'm sure each activation was recorded, but there isn't really a way to deactivate a device. Even a factory reset appears to be restricted to the phone, and doesn't register anything with the carrier/Google.

[+] dangrossman|14 years ago|reply

If you own 11 Android devices, you're probably in the top 10% of earners in this country. Smartphones as a whole aren't near 50% of cell phones in the US; the plans are still prohibitively expensive. I think the case of a single person owning more than one Android device is a very rare one.

[+] paperwork|14 years ago|reply

>Once you go Android, you tend to stay there

Interesting, I've heard the opposite. My brother knows several people who started out on Android, but switched to iphone. He ended up switching from learning to do Android apps to iPhone apps.

[+] untog|14 years ago|reply

Once you go Android, you tend to stay there.

I think that's conventional wisdom- and I think it's wrong. I went from Android to WP7, because I am a weird UI obsessive. But my girlfriend has an Android and is due an upgrade- and she's sick of it. She's likely going to get an iPhone.

[+] ugh|14 years ago|reply

It seems to me that Android would be the easiest to switch away from. Not so much for any technical reasons, rather because of the mindset most Android buyers (I know) have.

Android is the default choice if you don’t want an iPhone. It’s the default and generic smartphone. All people who have Android phones I know don’t care about the OS at all. They may like the phone (Look at my nice new Samsung smartphone! Isn’t this HTC phone cool?), they know nothing and don’t care one bit about the OS.

[+] Aloisius|14 years ago|reply

Goodness. Why do you own so many phones & tablets?

[+] rjd|14 years ago|reply

Well both my parents have replaced android phones with iphones because they had trouble using them. I had a cheap LG that went flat continuously and I gave it away and went back to a feature phone so I could use the phone for the purpose I need it.

I know a few people who are sysadmins with android, but I also know more sysadmins with black berries. I don't know anyone who isn't a sysadmin that has an android phone, most people I associate with tend to be in sale or design... so probably no surprise all of them use iphones.

[+] theSuda|14 years ago|reply

I guess these numbers will increase as mobile vendors provide better ROMs with their mobiles. I bought a LG Optimus one to get started on Android (a year ago)and I got sick of its LG ROM in two weeks flat. Then I rooted it and put a custom ROM from XDA forums (with a custom optimised Kernel). I couldn't be more happier with my mobile's performance than this. Also I hear some new models of LG, HTC, Samsung have minimal default apps and lightweight ROMs now. So people don't have to be frustrated with un-removable built in apps and crap default home launchers. This will certainly get usability freaks (like me) interested.

[+] danielharan|14 years ago|reply

That sounded way too high. But then, holy crap: 1 billion people buying a device once every 3 years is ~ 1 million a day.

Wow.

[+] diminish|14 years ago|reply

2 years is a better interval.

[+] X-Istence|14 years ago|reply

And these numbers are the reason why Android development is going to be a royal pain in the butt for a long time to come.

There is just no incentive for Google to change the developer tools to be more developer friendly, to be more powerful when developers are forced to release an Android application simply because it is the platform with the most users on it. Despite the fact that from a development standpoint it is a nightmare due to differing hardware/software to the point that shops that want to develop for Android have to have 30+ devices just for physically testing. The Android emulator is absolute crap because of timing difference a bug can manifest itself in the emulator and not on the phone and vice-versa.

Not only that but the quality of applications on Android devices is simply not up to par with the quality of the same applications on the iPhone. It says a lot when Twitter and Facebook wholesale take their UI designs/decisions and put them on Android devices from their iPhone counterparts.

[+] psychotik|14 years ago|reply

Amen. I wish they also included how many different variants of Android were actually being shipped, and what version each one was. _Those_ numbers would make us developers tremble.

With iOS, it's simple -- if a million iOS devices were activated today, I'd know they all ran the exact same version of iOS 5.x, and none were customized or bastardized by OEMs. At least on that front, I'm thankful to Apple (I can write a whole other rant about iOS' crappiness too, but that's not relevant here)

PS: Here's an example of how Android EMs screw over apps/devs: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5358014/android-httpclien...

[+] sebbi|14 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] pbreit|14 years ago|reply

I'm sure the number is accurate and kudos to Google but, wow, who the heck is activating all these devices? From the people I run into I would estimate the iOS:Android ratio at 10 or 20 to 1 (San Francisco).

[+] gbog|14 years ago|reply

Observation biais.

Estimations from China:

- In my office, a Web company: Android vs iOS is maybe 30 - 70

- In the subway, Android vs iOS is more like 80 - 20.

[+] bane|14 years ago|reply

My day job we have 2 holdouts still using iOS, the rest went BB->iOS->Android. 2 of us went BB->Android direct and based on our experiences we eventually converted the rest.

At a contract site I work at, out of 15 people on the team, only 1 has an iOS, the rest have some kind of Android variant (with 1 having a BB) two have switched from iOS to Android in the last 12 months. I wouldn't say there's significant peer pressure to switch, they just go to the store and end up with an Android device, so I expect carrier pressure is the source.

An inspection of the rest of the organization (about 500 people), shows it to be about 70/20/10 Android/BB/iOS.

At my startup we're 100% Android, but considering getting a couple iOS devices for development, but not day-to-day usage.

I have 3 friends who are Apple diehards, you'll get their iDevices out of their cold dead hands. But the rest are currently Android users, with one switching up phones every so often just to see what the other side has.

Coffee shops and trains around here (D.C.) show mostly Android phones and iPads. Very rare to see an Android tablet in the wild. iPhones are not too uncommon, but seem to belong to the younger, hipper crowd.

[+] akashshah|14 years ago|reply

In my team, in the last 3 months, 6 people have bought Androids vs 2 buying the iphone 4s

[+] buster|14 years ago|reply

In my team it's currently about even, but more and more switch over to Android. 1 year ago i was the only guy with an Android phone. Now it's even.

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