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]...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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)....

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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,...

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