3.7 Million Android Devices Activated During Christmas Weekend

Yes. This is not a typo, 3.7 Million. According to Andy Rubin on Twitter, there were 3.7 million Android devices on December 24th and 25th. This is 1st time activations too, it does not include factory data resets and upgrades. If it did, I would have contributed a couple to that total while I was trying out some ROMs.

If you recall, Andy Rubin announced earlier this month that they were up to 700,000 activation per day average now. With that many activations per day, the Christmas and Christmas Eve numbers are only about 2.5 times a normal day. Last December, he announced that there were around 300,000 activations per day and in June 2011, 500,000 announced.

1 million a day by Summer 2012?  

That doesn’t sound too far-fetched. I called it a couple of years ago, Android is the new feature phone. I actually said that when Android was a lot less refined than it is today in a jab at the OS, but I still stand by that statement. Now Android is grown up and has become the “new feature phone” in a good way. Many consumers are buying affordable Android devices over that simple flip phone they got last contract. Smartphone saturation in the US is at like 60% based on numbers I read from an analyst on Twitter. I can’t recall the analyst that shared that, but he’s reputable.

If you compare Mobile/Tablet Operating System Market Share for 2008 against 2011, you can see that feature phones are losing ground and Android is gaining ground. Android took Windows Mobile’s share and some, going from 2% to 15% . Windows Mobile and Windows Phone are at 0.42% and 0.21% respectively. Symbian dropped off 8% and somehow, BlackBerry gained 1%.

Android is catching up to iOS. With so many Android devices being released each year, there’s no reason that they can’t catch Apple’s iOS.

Did you activate an Android Device on Christmas?

Market Share data taken from NetMarketShare.