Showing posts with label Android Stats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Android Stats. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Andy Rubin Reveals Android Activations For December 24th and 25th

We told you guys earlier today about smartphone activations jumping 353% from the previous year but many were left wondering, “Just how many of those were Android devices?” Well, I found this report from Localytics who breaks it down by country and OS but if you’re looking for a specific number — our very own Andy Rubin helped further answer this burning question with a tweet he sent out only moments ago.
Apparently, there were 3.7 million Android activations just on December 24th and 25th alone. Pretty impressive numbers if you ask me. This leaves me wondering — did you guys get a shiny new Android device for Christmas? If so, which one?
[Twitter | Localytics]

Due to Christmas Smartphones Activations Up By 353% from December Norm

This Christmas the smartphone was the must-have gift and Flurry has the analytics data to back it up. According to their research, an average 1.5 million Android and iOS devices were activated daily between December 1st and 20th. For December 25th the number rose to an estimated 6.8 million, a 353 percent increase. The number is more than double the 2.8 million devices activated on Christmas in 2010.
After all of those Android and iOS devices were activated their new owners got to downloading apps right away with a record number 242 million apps downloaded between the two operating systems. The figure equates to a 125 percent increase from the December norm and eclipses last Christmas’ 150 million app downloads. Flurry didn’t provide data on the split between the two platforms for either activations or app downloads.
[via TechCrunch]

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Android activations grow to 700,000 a day

According to Andy Rubin, Android smartphones are now being activated 700,000 times in a single day. In the big scheme of things, that shows amazing growth. The OS is quite popular, but growing from 550,000 daily activations in July to 700K is incredible! It was estimated that we may be at 1 million activations a day by October 20th, but it undoubtedly digressed from the projected path.


So currently, that makes 4.9 million phones activated each week. Overall, Google states that over 200 million Android devices have been activated – so if the trend continues we could see Android surpass the 250 million iOS devices. This not only shows Android is dominating the smartphone market, but that it is continuously becoming more popular. Eventually we will see it peak out, but it’s hard to tell when.
Hopefully, Android owners are statisfied with their devices. If not, this could lead to a very adverse effect in projected market growth. It may take a while for them to bounce back – but with how fast the software is innovatively growing, the end user experience will undoubtedly lead to more repeat Android customers. But if Apple keeps jabbing patent related law suits at Android device manufacturers, we may never see Android surpass them.
[via The Verge]

Friday, December 16, 2011

Tablet sales up 264 percent, but miss targets, says IDC

IDC says 18.1 million media tablets were shipped in this year's third quarter, an increase of 264.5 percent compared with last year, and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 23.9 percent. Shipments fell short of IDC's original forecast of 19.2 million units, but the research company sees "strong demand" for this year's fourth quarter, thanks partly to shipments of Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Color. IDC has therefore increased its forecast for 2011 slightly, from 62.5 million to 63.3 million units.

The forecasts cover media tablet shipments to channels, not sales to consumers.

Apple was the market leader, shipping 11.1 million units in this year's third quarter compared with 9.3 million units last time. Its market share slipped slightly from 63.3 percent to 61.5 percent. Samsung took a distant second place with a 5.6 percent market share. Hewlett-Packard was third with a 5.6 percent market share, followed by Barnes & Noble (4.4 percent) and Asus (4.0 percent).

HP entered and left the market during the quarter, shifting 903,354 units of its TouchPad, mostly at fire-sale prices. Barnes & Noble shipped 805,458 units, according to IDC. RIM did not make the Top 5 table, having seen its shipments reportedly tumble from 500,000 units in this year's first quarter to 200,000 in Q2 and 150,000 in Q3 (when, thanks to price reductions, it sold more PlayBooks than it shipped).

The media tablet market is still small enough to be changed dramatically by individual product launches. IDC says in a statement:

"After ceding share in 3Q11 (down to 32.4 percent from 33.2 percent the previous quarter), IDC expects Android to make dramatic share gains in 4Q11 growing to 40.3 percent. That increase is due mostly to the entrance of Amazon's Kindle Fire, and to a lesser extent the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, into the market. The share increase comes at the expense of Blackberry (slipping from 1.1 percent to 0.7 percent), iOS (slipping from 61.5 percent to 59.0 percent), and webOS (slipping from 5 percent to 0 percent). Despite HP's announcement last week that it would contribute webOS to the Open Source community, IDC does not believe the operating system will reappear in the media tablet market in any meaningful way going forward."

The media tablet category is somewhat arbitrary. IDC used to count all of Barnes & Noble's products in the eReader category, which is dominated by the Amazon Kindle range. Also, IDC may find it difficult to track sales of the Kindle Fire separately, since Amazon does not publish sales figures.

Separately, Amazon announced yesterday that "that Kindle devices remain the hottest products this holiday season – for the third week in a row, customers are purchasing well over 1 million Kindle devices per week, and Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago."

@jackschofield

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

NPD: Android passes 50% market share in the US

Android has been making a beeline to the top of the smartphone world for the last two years, and it looks like the little green OS that could has passed one of its biggest milestones yet. Research firm NPD says that Android runs on 53% of the smartphones being used in the US. No other OS comes close, with iOS in a distant second at 29%. If mobile operating systems were horses, Android would lead by about two and a half lengths.

But the really interesting numbers come in at the third place and lower contenders. RIM’s BlackBerry continues its downward slide with just 8 percent of the market, and Microsoft’s Window Phone 7 presence is sitting at just 2%. Compare that to a 50% market share for Windows Mobile four years ago. Android and iOS, the only mobile operating systems making concrete gains, combine for a whopping 82% of the market. Worldwide Android activations are creeping up on 200 million, beating iOS in just about every market. In some places like the UK and China, Android reached the halfway point even faster.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

ComScore: 41 million US smartphone owners use Android

Android is dominating the worldwide smartphone game, and while there are markets where it’s even more dominant than it is in the United States, a combination of population and smartphone interest makes it one of the hottest markets on the planet. Android’s continuing gains were highlighted by Nielsen last month, and comScore backs up their numbers with the latest reports on the US mobile market. According to comScore’s math, 41.6 million Americans now use Android-powered smartphones.

That’s 46.3% of all US smartphones,which now number approximately 90 million. The second banana is Apple’s iOS, which has 28.1% of the market, which figures out to 25.3 million iPhones. Unsurprisingly, BlackBerry and Windows-based phones fell again, to 17.2% and 5.6%, respectively. These statistics are for the month of October 2011, when total smartphone ownership in the U.S. grew 10% overall from the last quarter. Android and iOS together made up two-thirds of the smartphone userbase.
There’s two things that we can take away from this report: one, total smartphone adoption in the US is growing fast enough for multiple OS and device makers to increase their sales at the same time, and two, Android may be approaching a saturation point within the next year. With nearly half the smartphone market running Google’s OS, and Apple controlling a the majority of what’s left, the two giants are essentially fighting over users that are abandoning the arguably weaker platforms of Windows Mobile/Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry, Symbian and others.
If you extrapolated that in the next year, half of all users from other platforms switched to Android, a quarter switched to iOS and another quarter stayed put, that would give Android a 59.1% share of the market, with iOS trailing at 34.5. That’s a very optimistic projection from an Android point of view (and, just to be clear, absolutely unscientific). That said, the continued expansion of the smartphone market in the US and worldwide makes it an imperative for just about every manufacturer and developer.
nthly_comscore_smartphone_marketshare_oct_11_1 [via Fierce Mobile Content]

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Android gains ground from BlackBerry in latest US mobile comScore figures

The outlook has been grim for RIM’s BlackBerry platform for some time, and new figures out today from comScore add to the gloom.
The data company’s report, looking at mobile market share in the US in October 2011, shows BlackBerry dropping 4.5 percentage points in terms of share of smartphone subscribers since July, dropping to 17.2% of the market. Meanwhile, Google’s Android has gained 4.4 percentage points, extending its lead with 46.3%. Apple saw a modest gain rising 1 percentage point to 28.1%.
Meanwhile, Microsoft and Symbian’s market shares by platform both saw modest 0.3 percentage point declines in the three months up to October.

There was little change in terms of manufacturer market share though. Samsung held steady at the top, with 25.5% of the market. LG, Motorola saw modest declines of less than 1%. RIM was down 1% and Apple saw a 1% gain, perhaps helped by interest in the iPhone 4S, released in mid-October.
Screen Shot 2011 12 02 at 17.44.28 Android gains ground from BlackBerry in latest US mobile comScore figures

Friday, December 2, 2011

Gingerbread surpasses 50% distribution on Android devices

It’s been nearly a year since Google made Android 2.3 Gingerbread available to the public, and it’s taken nearly that long for it to dominate the Android space. Google’s posted the November numbers for the various distributions of Android, and Gingerbread has surpassed the 50% mark for the first time. The various versions of Gingerbread now run on 50.6% of all Android phones and tablet, up from 43.9% last month.


Froyo is still on more than a third of active Android devices, however. Android 2.2 accounts for 35.3 of all devices. On the plus side, 2.1 Eclair, now almost two years old, is only being used by slightly more than 10% of phones and tablets. Honeycomb is still at a measely 2.4% of all Android devices, but it’s restricted to tablets, and was not available in an open-source form until a few weeks ago.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich doesn’t show up on the latest chart, despite being available on the Galaxy Nexus in a few select markets. But its’ got a lot of growing to do, and will probably do so very fast: unlike Honeycomb, it’s been open source from the get go, and device manufacturers will begin to implement it into new hardware very soon. Makers of inexpensive Android tablets in China are already starting to test alpha hardware running ICS. And the open source code opens the door for custom ROM makers, many of whom have already released early versions for existing phones and tablets.
Between the already huge Android smartphone market and the growing tablet market, ICS could be the Android OS with the fastest adoption rate ever. We’ll see in the coming months.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Android claims 40% of enterprise mobile web traffic

Internet security service provider, Zscaler, recently published some interesting usage data for the last quarter, including some insight into mobile browser usage. Although iOS may be winning device adoption over BlackBerry in businesses, it looks like the majority of Zscaler’s enterprise subscribers that browse the web on smartphones (40.3%) are doing so through an Android device, while BlackBerry claimed 37.26%, and iOS 22.38%. Zscaler further broke down those numbers into geographies; 75.34% of the Android users were from the U.S., followed up by Spain (5.48%), Israel (9.17%), and Singapore (2.76%). Zscaler even drilled down into what kind of sites were being visited, though a lot of the data is incomplete. Among Android enterprise users, 42.9% of browsing fell under the “other” category”, but social networking (16.95%) was top among registered metrics, followed up by professional services (10.55%), and corporate marketing (7.5%).
Though most consumers might be more interested in proper apps than the mobile web, in an enterprise environment, apps are harder to securely roll out and control. It’s not hugely surprising to see social networking taking the lead in web traffic, though iPhone users had a much higher percentage of professional services usage than Android (30.2%).
You can take a look at the full Zscaler report over here.
[via ZDNet]

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Google: Over 200 million Android devices activated globally


Today during the live broadcast of the Google Music event going on now, Google has just announced that over 200 million android devices have been activated a globally. A number that has doubled in the past 6 months. Whoa, that is a pretty large number that appears to be growing by the thousands every single day.



The Google “These Go to Eleven” event has just announced the new Google Music and that it will be completely free offering Android users 25,000 songs worth of free cloud storage for all their music. For all of the details as they become available feel free to check out that link above.
Not only that but all of this music will be full high quality 320 kbps music, beating Apple’s 256 offering. We are still digging through all the details but thought the above numbers regarding well over 200 million android devices was worth a quick post. The Android Army is going strong and is showing NO signs of slowing down. Enjoy the ride guys!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

More than 50 percent of all smartphones sold worldwide run Android


The global domination of Android has seemed inexorable for the last year and a half, and now new research tells us what we’ve long suspected. According to Gartner, more than half of all smartphones sold worldwide use Android as of the third quarter of 2011. To be exact, 52.5% of all new smartphones sold come with Google’s OS in one form or another, with 60 million units and change being sold in the three months period. That’s an almost 200% rise over the same time span last year.

As far as manufacturers go, Nokia remains top dog in the overall market, selling 105 million devices including smartphones and “featurephones”. Samsung is hot on their heels at 78.6 million, with LG in a distant third at 21 million. Apple, ZTE, Research in Motion, HTC, Motorola, Huawei and Sony round out the top ten. Again, the placement includes featurephones, though in Apple and RIM’s cases the distinction doesn’t matter. Samsung is the largest manufacturer of smartphones at 24 million, with Apple following at 17 million.
Android has essentially doubles its market share in terms of sales over the last year. When compared to other operating systems, Android’s lead becomes even more dramatic. Nokia’s Symbian OS still powers 16.9% of smartphones, with Apple’s iOS trailing at 15%. Nokia’s market share is down a staggering 20 points year over year (though they’re transitioning to Windows Phone 7), while Apple lost 1.6. Blackberry has just 11%, while Samsung’s in-house OS Bada is actually beating Microsoft’s combined Windows share, at 2.2 and 1.5 percent, respectively.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Android distribution numbers hold steady, Honeycomb still under 2%


When last we saw the distribution of the various Android versions, Gingerbread had nearly cracked 40% of the worldwide Android platform. This month it’s passed it, taking 43.9% and inching closer to the still-dominant Froyo. Android 2.2 is still running on just over half of all Android devices, nearly eleven months after Gingerbread’s release. Android’s tablet OS Honeycomb barely increased to 1.9%, up just two tenths of a percent in a month.

With the imminent release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which plays nice on both smartphone and tablet platforms, Honeycomb seems to be the odd man out. There’s still almost as many non-Honeycomb tablets being sold as there are which run Google’s tablet software, no doubt because the source code for Honeycomb still hasn’t been made availalble. At this point, it probably never will. Makers of cheap Android tablets or those who don’t wish to meet Google’s strict requirements for Honeycomb must use an earlier version.
Speaking of Ice Cream Sandwich, the few Galaxy Nexus phones that are out in the wild aren’t enough to make an impact on the chart. It’s likely to stay that way for a while, too, with the Galaxy Nexus launching in late November at the earliest and only a few official Ice Cream Sandwich devices even rumored for 2011. Don’t expect ICS to make any sort of significant showing in the monthly charts until well into 2012.

Asus’ new Transformer Prime will probably still be rocking Honeycomb when it’s released, and HTC’s new flagship phone the Rezound will be released with Gingerbread on November 14th. HTC isn’t planning on updating the phone to Ice Cream Sandwich until early 2012. Most other manufacturers probably won’t be any faster, though Motorola has promised a six week turnaround after the source code is made available.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Android’s native browser beats Opera Mini, still lags behind iOS

Ready for a whole new set of browser wars? Not content to keep the web browser battle to the desktop space, Google’s native Android browser, uh, “Browser”, is now beating the long-standing Opera Mini for worldwide mobile browser market share. However, both are still far, far behind Safari, which commands over half of the market as of October 2011.


And iOS Safari is still rising: it gained another six and a half percent to take 62.2 percent of all mobile device browsing in October. That includes all browsing from iPhones, iPods and iPads. Android’s browser now stands at 18.7 percent, while Opera Mini dropped almost a third of its total user share down to just 13.1 percent. And in case you’re wondering, no, that doesn’t include the more powerful Opera Mobile, though Opera Mini runs on Android, iOS, Blackberry, Symbian and Java-powered phones.

The numbers aren’t all that surprising, considering that Opera isn’t installed by default on any smartphones. But of the leading mobile web browsers, it’s been around the longest: the initial Java version came out in 2005, a full two years before the iPhone and its mobile browser hit the market, and three years before Android. It’s also got a lot more features than either of the big players, though like its desktop cousin, rendering issues still put some sites off-limits.

It’ll be interesting to see how the mobile browser market shifts once Google Chrome comes to Android, in fact if not in name – many of the additions to the stock browser in Ice Cream Sandwich are already shared with Chrome, and the desktop version now commands an impressive 17.6 percent of the market.

[via Cnet]

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Android serves up 56% of mobile ads in third quarter


Android can’t be stopped, and the progress is visible form more than just a hardware standpoint. According to Millennium Media by way of GigaOM, a full 56% of ads sent to mobile users were displayed on Android devices, with just 28% of the share going to Apple products and the remaining percentage split between other operating systems. Apple is still the leader in single-manufacturer impressions, with Samsung trailing at 16.5%.

The data is the latest in long line of stories that illustrate Android’s continuing worldwide dominance. Android now has the most mobile app downloads of any operating system, and the Android Market has published over half a million separate apps (though only about 320,000 total apps are available at the moment). Android continues to lead the pack in hardware sales, especially in Asia, where more than 50% of smartphones sold run the Android operating system.
The mobile ad data is important to advertisers and app developers, both of whom have to decide where to devote their resources. It’s pretty good news for Google, too, since ad revenue is their primary source of return income after developing and giving away Android for license-free use by OEMs. Though Apple still rules when it comes to manufacturers, Samsung is nipping at its brushed aluminum heels, and HTC had the highest number of devices in the top 20 ad impressions list with six. Android runs on 15 of the top 20 devices for ad impressions.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

More than 50% of smartphones sold in Asia run Android


Now Google and Samsung’s decision to move the Galaxy Nexus event to Hong Kong makes more sense. A new report from ABI research states that a whopping 52% of the smartphones in Asia are running Android. That’s a considerable lead on the United States, where Android currently commands 43% of the smartphone market.


The growth of Android in Asia is especially dramatic in Asia, where the operating system has gained 36% market share in just one year. Of course, much of Asia is still considered an emerging market, which is why only 27% of mobile phones sold there qualify as smartphones, as opposed to 40% in the U.S. We know that Android is big in China, and a big part of that is its open-source nature, allowing small and large manufacturers alike to create Android phones without paying a licensing fee. It probably doesn’t hurt that the two largest manufacturers of Android phones, Samsung and HTC, are based in South Korea and Taiwan, respectively.
In the next few years Asia will become an even more important part of the smartphone market, and the tech world in general. Analysts currently predict smartphone market share to double in the next five years, and if Android maintains its current success, it’ll be a pretty one-sided one at that. With Samsung, HTC and regional players like Pantech creating phones at every price level, it’ll be a bitter fight to see who can create and sell Android phones the fastest in the territory.Android is also making great strides in tablets and other form factors, such as the traditionally popular personal translator clamshell.

Android scores 27% of worldwide tablet sales in Q3 2011


Things are looking up for Android’s tablet aspirations. Though the iPad is still the market leader, Android tablets are slowly carving out a space, to the tune of 4.5 million shipments in the last three months. That’s 26.9% of the worldwide market, edging up towards the iPad’s 66.6%. The growth is considerable, since not long ago the iPad made up a huge 80% chunk of sales.


Unfortunately a large percentage of Android tablets are still running on Gingerbread or Froyo, essentially translating a smartphone interface into a 7-10″ screen. According to Google’s latest activation and OS percentage numbers, only 3.4 million Android devices are running Honeycomb, despite a worldwide total of 6 million. Smaller, cheaper tablets are still firmly in the Gingerbread space, even for new offerings from the likes of ViewSonic and Velocity Micro.
But there’s hope on the horizon for cheap Android tablet everywhere in the form of Android 4.0. Ice Cream Sandwich features a scalable interface equally suited to smartphones and tablets, and according to Google engineers, the OS will be open-sourced by the end of the year. After that, it won’t be long before OEMs begin to make new tablets to take advantage of Ice Cream Sandwich, and the Android developer community won’t take long to get Ice Cream Sandwich onto current tablets of all sizes and price points. The upcoming Asus Transformer Prime is suspected to be the first commercial tablet with Ice Cream Sandwich.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Rubin says 6M Android tablets are now on the market


Andy Rubin, the head of Android at Google, has offered up a detail on the Android tablet market that sheds some light on just how well the tablets are doing. According to Rubin right now there are 6 million tablets in the wild. Last week we had heard from developer estimates that there were only 3.4 million Honeycomb tablets in the wild. If the dev estimates were accurate, that would mean that a bit over half of the Android tablets out there are Honeycomb.



However, it’s not clear if the developer estimate was anywhere near accurate. It’s also not clear if the number of tablets Rubin offers includes only Honeycomb devices or earlier tablets that ran the smartphone version of the OS like the original Galaxy Tab. Google is gearing up to get even more Android tablets on the market.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will be the big motivator for Android tablet adoption or at least Google hopes so. The newest 4.0 version of Android will be for tablets and smartphones in one build combining the ecosystem. Will you be buying an Android 4.0 tablet?
[via SlashGear]

Friday, October 14, 2011

Survey: most Android owners aren’t interested in the iPhone 4S


Apple’s iPhone 5 iPhone 4S releases today, and as usual it’s gobbled up its fair share of the tech buzz ever since its announcement. But according to a recent survey by Retrevo, most of the consumer interest is coming from existing iPhone users, not the ever-expanding Android userbase. According to the 1,300 responders, just 12% of Android users are planning on purchasing a new iPhone.



That’s a steep decline from current Apple users. 44% of iPhone 3 and 3GS owners said they’d buy the new phone, while a surprising 42% of iPhone 4 owners said they’d spring for the modest upgrade. Keep in mind, nearly all iPhone 4 owners will be paying full price for the 4S, since they’re at most about 16 months into a 24 month cellular contract. What’s even more surprising is that only 24% of Blackberry users said they’d buy a new iPhone, despite RIM positively bleeding marketshare in the last few months – no points for guessing where the rest are probably going.
In other news, the iPhone 4S’s lack of true 4G connections is a major disappointment. Over 70% of smartphone owners and 50% of iPhone owners lamented the lack of LTE in the new model. The iPhone 4S will feature an HSPA+ radio, achieving speeds which AT&T has been advertising as “4G”, but it won’t be able to connect to the faster LTE network on Verizon or AT&T. That’s a pretty typical move for Apple – remember that the original iPhone launched with EDGE amidst a sea of 3G smartphones and featurephones.
There’s no denying that the iPhone 4S will sell a boatload of units, but as with previous generations, it’s mostly selling to the Apple faithful. Expect a larger turnaround when the true iPhone 5 appears next year – of course, by then Android phones will be even further ahead in specifications and market share.
[via eWeek]

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

2.3 Gingerbread now on almost 40% of Android devices

Google announced the latest software breakdown for Android today (what, you didn’t think there was only one announcement going on, did you?) and the numbers are promising. 38.7% of devices running Android are using version 2.3, “Gingerbread”, the latest smartphone version officially supported by Google. For what’s probably the first time this year, less than half of the Android userbase is running on Froyo.


That isn’t a particularly encouraging figure, but at least more and more carriers and manufacturers are releasing phones with the latest version of Android available. Since this summer it’s been unusual to see a new product announced with anything except Gingerbread or Honeycomb running on its silicon, a promising sign that both consumers and manufacturers are beginning to expect up-to-date software to match the hardware. Unfortunately, with the exception of Nexus-class phones, older devices are still rarely upgraded to more than one major Android version past their release date.
The third-largest chunk of the userbase is running Android 2.1, at just under 12%. That’s a relevant figure, since 2.1 users are far more likely to run into app compatibility issues than 2.2 users. Honeycomb, Google’s official tablet version of Android, is still only running on 1.6% of devices more than six months after the debut of the Motorola XOOM. There’s no two ways about it: Android is getting whipped in the tablet market. Here’s hoping that the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich will fix at least some of these woes by unifying the latest version of Android on both slates and phones – however long that takes.
[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Android might reach 1 million activations a day by October 20th

When last we hear Google speak on the number of Android devices activated per day, Larry Page declared the number at 550,000. That way way back on July 14th. Now analyst Michael DeGusta predicts that the number could reach as high as one million devices worldwide every day before the end of October. That’s a growth of nearly double in less than ninety days.


Even conservative estimates put the number of worldwide activations at at least 1,000,000 a day by December. Any way you slice it, it’s an incredible milestone for an operating system that’s about to pass its third birthday (if you go by retail hardware). And of course, it’s a heck of a statistic to come out the day before a certain big announcement.
The number of Android activations, i.e. the number of smartphones, tablets and other devices that sign in to Google for the first time on any given day, isn’t exactly, well, exact. There’s a significant number of Android devices that eschew the Android Market and other Google services, not to mention older phones that are hard reset or loaded up with new software. But as a metric of growth, it lines up with other statistics nicely, including the all-important market share reports.

At last count, Android had a whopping 54% of the market share among “connected devices” (smartphones and tablets combined). The next closest was Apple’s iOS with 28%, followed by Blackberry at 13%. Windows Mobile and Symbian were each rated at just 1%. Both Android and iOS are expanding, while all other competitors are in decline. Apple still leads the individual device race with the iPhone’s 13% share and the tablet market with the iPad winning over 80%.