Android Device DAILY Activations pass the 500K mark! History in the making...

As one of the very early ecosystem partner & evangelist of Android (when I worked as Product Line Exec for Linux OS Platforms for Mobile - Android) well before it ever open sourced in Oct. 2008, I'm thrilled to see a new chapter in history being written today - 500K Android devices go live every day!

Right around early May of this year at the I/O event, Google revealed its daily Android activation figures which was about 400,000 activations a day. It’s not even been two months, and now Google’s Android SVP Andy Rubin boasts a historical milestone of Android: “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 reportedly dipped for the first time since 2009 according to IDC.  However, that's not a fair time comparison when Verizon's iPhone 4 had just launched in big gear. Clearly, Android devices are flying off the shelves and we don’t expect to see that change anytime soon!
Between January to March of this year, 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. It's not at all a surprise to see iPhone lose the market share war to Android, in fact, Apple couldn't care less about market share ranks as all they're laser focused on is revenue and profits.  Hats off to the iPhone since after all this is just one phone platform cracking that much dent to a crowded market.  Although we already know that iPhone 5 won't be anything earth-shattering, iOS and iPhone truly deserves full credit on revamping the Mobile industry from ground up to the next level.

As I've been vouching from mid 2009, Android still has ways to go -- the main open source branch (2.3) has finally stabilized but the ecosystem at large must now fight Fragmentation to truly stay relevant among the developers and its customers...  More on this to come later.