Android activations near a million a day Almost a million Android devices are activated every 24 hours, according to Google's Andy Rubin. The company's senior VP of mobile stuff revealed the statistics through Twitter where, after insisting he had no plans to leave Google, claimed "there are over 900,000 Android devices activated each day". Androids on skateboards …
Consider the mathematics:
3 months to supply everyone in one country with a single device. That device may not last two years (Galaxy S2 was announced Feb 2011, Galaxy S3 was announced May 2012) before it breaks, someone replaces it, it's obsolete, people get an upgrade from their contract supplier, etc.
That's actually not that much, because in two year's time you'll only take another 3 months to "supply" everyone in that country all over again. The people who never upgrade will be balanced by those with 2-3 phones, upgrade-frenzy, used devices, broken devices, lost devices, stolen devices etc.
Multiple that up by the 900,000 being *worldwide-sales* and having world-wide amounts of buyers and it's extremely plausible for a popular device. The question is not the number of activations, but the number of active accounts and/or the number of new, unique accounts CREATED only for the activation of an Android device. I'm sure Google know exactly how many people have an Android phone tied to their Google accounts, but they choose to quote *activations* instead. What about deactivations, for instance?
I think the number is very plausible, especially given the amount of people I've seen with an Android phone who don't even know it and a quick glance through even high-street stores like Argos or Carphone Warehouse show that most of their phones are actually Android nowadays. That's not counting things like tablets either (my mum has an Android tablet, for goodness sake).
as you correctly note this 900k number is bogus because it doesn't include people getting fed up with their android phones and switching to windows phone which i have on reliable inside authority is now more than 100k/day and will be 500k/day by the end of august i use metro every day and am delighted every morning at its speed fluid operation and shiny shiny coloured tiles
900,000 isn't unrealistic. According to the best figures I can find quickly, during Q1 2011 Apple sold about 378,000 iPhones a day and 157,000 iPads. I've no idea about iPods, but presumably if we were to assume that in Google's terms each device gets counted as a single activation then we can conclude that Apple — then already behind Android in shipment totals — were doing at least 525,000 per day a year ago.
So for the OS that outsells Apple in a rapidly expanding market to be doing 900,000 a day a year later seems entirely realistic.
Why not wait until it's actually 1m rather than 'more than 900,000'? WWDC is the only obvious explanation.
So I guess they're trying to get some developer attention away from iOS. Well Mr. Rubin, maybe you should tell us that the android app store is making more money for devs than iOS instead? I'd be a lot more interested in porting to android if it didn't mean 25% of the income for 4x the support cost and 4x the testing work.
The usual crybaby excuse. from iOS devs happy in the paid-for-cartel of iOS world.
With Android, there are already many good FREE alternatives to whatever app or game you sell on iOS. It upto YOU to make people want to pay for it (and if it's good enough, they will, I have plenty of paid for Android apps, when the cost is justified).
Just because your app or game is no better than free alternatives, don't come crying to us.
Lol, what? :D I don't get what you're actually trying to say, but it made me laugh.
I have a few popular iOS apps. Some free, some paid. I don't care too much which platform I write for, so long as it's possible to make something cool, and so long as it pays the bills. I don't see much point in writing for a platform that doesn't pay the bills - and therefore I'm not supporting WP7, blackberry or symbian.
Android I'd only consider in exceptional circumstances at the moment, because it does generally make only 1/4 of the money that the same app on iOS does. If you don't believe this, fine, but it's well documented, and it's why most devs still target iOS first and android second (again, go look it up - it's well documented).
Besides that, a lot of my work is highly performance critical. That's OK on iOS where there's only a few devices to consider, but on android? It's near impossible. I'd have to limit it to just the most popular devices, and certain OS versions - which limits the potential market massively, and is STILL a huge headache as I have to buy maybe 20 phones to test against. The fact that ICS uptake is so slow really hurts too, most devices are still on 2.x.
"The fact that ICS uptake is so slow really hurts too, most devices are still on 2.x."
Then develop for 'most devices', surely?
Or develop for ICS under the fair assumption that devices running that can meet a set of minimum specs.
I can see why anyone who has to make a living would go for the more profitable option but some of the gripes about Android seem a little shallow.
Not to mention the fact that getting in early to a more rapidly growing market might be the smarter, less short-termist move.
If I develop for "most devices" then I can't write cutting-edge stuff, which is what I do. So if I wrote for android, I'd have to limit it to devices with reasonable CPU + GPU specs (mainly GPU) and a recent android build (I think the APIs I'd require as a minimum weren't added until 3.x). That limits it a whole lot - and the 4:1 iOS:android income figures I've mentioned are from devs that are targeting a fairly wide range of devices, so I suspect it'd go from disappointing to outright painful for me :/
As to the 'getting in early' argument - maybe. Guess it depends on what you're building mainly. If I was building some new social game or something like that I'd definitely agree. I'm kind of wondering if the getting in early argument actually works better for WP7 though? I'm not convinced on the platforms future, but it could work out. (My own work would actually be outright impossible on that platform though, i've checked!)
Quote:
"Android I'd only consider in exceptional circumstances at the moment, because it does generally make only 1/4 of the money that the same app on iOS does. If you don't believe this, fine, but it's well documented, and it's why most devs still target iOS first and android second (again, go look it up - it's well documented)."
Yeah, that seems about right, it seems a "crybaby excuse" is the new cool freetard way to describe a well considered commercial decision. I don't see many fewer free applications on iOS than on android in terms of variety, but I'd agree there's a hell of lot more v0.1 fodder on droid.
So sir, I applaud your rational commercial decision in the wake of the "crybaby" nonsense, because like you, unfortunately, when my Children are hungry all the hubris and vitriol in the world doesn't fill their bellies...
Sounds like you need some Android traning... Why would ICS takeup determine how you write your apps or games?
For games, screen resolution, yes.. GPU/CPU performance, yes, but OS??? Come on you have nicely demonstrated to the world how much you simply don't get Android... There is VERY little changed in the API between Android 2.3 and 4. Pretty much everything that has can be added using the support libraries (Fragments being the big one). http://developer.android.com/sdk/compatibility-library.html
I think they do Android training course here: http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/introducing-android-training.html
1. In europe a lot of people are buying android phones instead of a feature phone, because it looks so much better than the feature phones. They then mostly use it as a feature phone. This is why you see iOS usage figures (and app store profit) so much higher despite there being so many android devices.
2. All the 'developing markets'. This accounts for a huge chunk of android sales from what I've heard.
...because I've spent hours hacking into build.props, faking other device IDs to make it seen as compatible with more apps in the Play Store. At least Play Store certainly sees it as multiple different activated devices devices now :-)
I wonder how much of this can be put down to a form of confirmation bias?
iPhones are fairly recognisable. There are only a certain number of shapes and sizes that they come in. The orignal iPhone, the very simular 3G, which was identical (case wise) to the 3GS, the iPhone 4, which again looks the same as the 4S. I make that 3 body shapes variations, 2 of which are dificult to tell apart.
Therefore it's easy to spot the iPhones, but not so easy to spot Androids. My San Franisco looks very different to my wife's Galaxy II, which is different to my bosses Sony something, which is different to...
The reason that you see more iPhones is because you know what you are looking for, not because there are more of them. 3 body shapes to spot, rather than hundreds of them, some of which are not what you expect.
I know!
What a shame for them eh? Fancy being seen with last decades tech. Tisk.
A design that looks like a kitchen circa 2000 (glass and stainless steel), and a UI that looks as attractive as 80's wallpaper.
Still, I suppose they will get with the times, eventually. They'll wait for the next incarnation of the behind the times idevice or switch to their competitors. After all Winows Phone UI looks like it was designed in 2012 (never mind what the hardware looks like) or 'Droid (which looks like it was deisgned in 2009).
far from looking as if it was designed in 2012 it is so wonderful to use that it seems as if it were gifted to modern day man through a time portal from 20 years in the future. by 2015 users will have forgotten that apple ever existed such will be the overwhelming response to microsoft's gift to all
So my wife bought herself a shiny new Android to upgrade her old dropped-in-the-sink-once-too-often Android which has gone in the bin. I helped her get it set up, and logged in under my ID for various reasons. We then wiped it, started over, and logged it in under hers.
So I am guessing the stats now show total activations: 3, and total devices: 2, when the numbers are actually 1 and 1.
Do you think your experience is common enough to make a significant difference to the figures?
I've had two android phones and made dozens of activations but I realise I am in a tiny minority - a much more significant minority with Android than any other phone OS, I am sure, but still an aberration that I doubt would emerge from the background noise of the bigger picture.
It's per device - your scenario only one activation.
@Jim "careful what you say or you'll be reported" Coleman - I helped my dad set up his contacts and access them on his 'dumbphone' Nokia 6510. Does that make it a complicated OS?
Hopefully you won't report me for questioning your logic.
I mean ... they're hardly a status symbol. Tweenagers and grandmothers have them.
The only phone I've seen being waved around recently was the samsung s3. And that was mainly because it had the biggest screen to watch a _hilarious_ interweb video.
Gotta love those statiticians on how they manipulate numbers in their favor. Android activations are not small, but how do they arrive at those numbers? Does everytime someone do a factor reinstall and sign-in count as an activation? Is it those who have a Google Play account? How many of us have more than one GP account?
As far as upgrading a phone goes? We've seen a considerable increase in Android over the last two years simply because Apple can't get their heads out of the arse in realizing that when it comes to screen size, bigger is definitely better. The "not even" modest upgrade coming to the iPhone5 in the fall is virtually insignificant. It's a mere 0.5 inch upgrade. I do predict iPhone5 sales will be much higher because most people are brainwashed (by Apple) and their fan-base to believe they don't need a larger screen. If they want larger, they can then buy one of their iPads.
Most people (outside of North America) don't upgrade every 2 years. Their contracts are for 3 years like in Canada. Many people buy hacked, grey market, or "clonded" smartphones which for the most part run Android.
Whenever stats are shoved into our faces, people need to take a few steps back and really analyze the numbers instead of taking them at face value. Unfortunately, like those in the medical profession, most people are either too lazy or don't have the time to research the data presented to them.
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