500,000 Android Devices Activated Every Day?

A Google vice president announced that Android is activating more than 500,000 devices a day.

Andy Rubin, senior vice president of Android at Google, tweeted the news Tuesday morning, saying "There are now over 500,000 Android devices activated every day, and it's growing at 4.4% (week-over-week)."

Some tweeters, like @Normalman1977, were skeptical of the news. "@ARubin hard to believe, and just because there are more doesn't make it better."

Rubin, who seems to tweet once every two months, said on Dec. 8 that Android was activating more than 300,000 phones every day -- which would mean Android demand rose 60 percent in six months. And those kind of numbers might make anyone, including journalists, a little skeptical -- especially when you consider that at the Google I/O developer conference last month Google said they had activated 100 million Android devices worldwide. (Recent reports say that Android is expected to grow quickly, estimating 315 million handhelds will be sold in 2012, and that the Android platform will be 43.8 percent of all handhelds by 2015.)

If we take what Rubin says at face value, then 500,000 activations a day means 91 million activations in the next six months, which is consistent with some of the more bullish reports. So either that rate is inflated, or Android is just hitting a worldwide spike in demand. Which do you think it is?
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