News

While most eyes with interest in the smartphone world will probably be swivelling on stalks with sickening synchronicity towards some city in Santa Clara County today, it’s also a good day to release a bit of Apple party pooping news from the arena of Android.

According to an announcement from Google’s Director of Product Management, Hugo Barra, made today from outside the Big G’s Mountain View headquarters, the open source OS has hit a whopping 500 million activations! That’s half a billion for those lacking the maths/interest – on a planet with a population of just over seven billion. That’s a lot of Android.

With 1.3 million new handsets being activated every day, the figure has been rocketing since similar announcements of 300 million activations was made in February and 400 million in June, with the sheer proliferation of quality new devices making their way onto the marketplace, along with Android’s open platform approach, responsible.

Of course the big question is, with such exponential growth over a handful of months, how long will it be before the Google OS hits the one billion mark? Well, as we say, with iEyes (Aye-ayes?) focusing their retina displays hard on Cupertino this afternoon when Johnny 5 is expected to be wheeled out, this astronomical rate of growth may slow for a while. But, rest assured, the big billion is on the way!