Google Exec: More Than 300K Android Phones Activated Daily

By Mashable/Mobile

Andy Rubin, the Google executive who heads up the Android division, has just tweeted an astonishing statistic. According to Rubin, more than 300,000 Android phones are activated every day.
That number is around five times greater than the stat spouted by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in February of this year; at that time, Google was claiming around 60,000 devices shipped each day.
On the surface, quintupling the quantity of product moved within a ten-month period seems absurd, but the Android platform has actually had a blockbuster year. In the past year alone, Android has been the OS for dozens of product launches, including smartphones and tablets.
If you look at the most popular models in the Android family — many of which have only launched since Schmidt’s announcement in February — it’s easy to see how Android’s numbers have grown so quickly.
Motorola’s highly successful Droid spawned an entire line of follow-ups, including HTC’s Droid Incredible (launched in April) and Motorola’s Droid X (launched in June) and Droid 2 (launched in August). Meanwhile, HTC was churning out other Android smartphones such as the highly anticipated Evo (launched in June) and the Desire (launched mid-February). And Samsung brought the Galaxy S (another June launch) to the table, as well as the not-yet-available Android-based Tab. Another Android tablet from Dell, however, is available now: the Streak.
With all these options to choose from, more new-to-smartphone consumers began choosing Android devices over the iPhone; in fact, Android smartphones outsold iPhones for the first time ever in the beginning of 2010.
However, iPhone is still the device to beat; we’re not sure that any single Android device has yet had the traction to outsell the iPhone 4, for example.
Nevertheless, these numbers — and Rubin’s tweet — show that fragmentation, long held to be the weak point of the Android ecosystem, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.