“It was only in September last year that Apple was activating 230,000 iOS devices versus Google’s 160,000 activations,” MacNN reports. “According to comments made by Andy Rubin in December last year, Google was activating 300,000 Android devices a day and had taken the lead. But it seems that this is currently no longer the case.”
MacDailyNews Take: Actually, Apple simply said nothing in December, so it’s impossible to definitively claim that Google took any “lead” at all.
MacNN continues, “According to another estimate, Apple will also sell its 100 millionth iPhone this year.”
Full article here.
Android activations aren’t impressive anyway. They include all 600 Android phones, mp3 players, tablets, coffee machines, and all the other crap they put that pathetic OS on.
Very impressive of Apple. They are going up against a POS OS given away for FREE! Take that into perspective!
I tell people who have Androids because they don’t want iPhones that if they like Android, they still need to thank Steve Jobs.
pound sand Google – pound sand!
(i just love saying that!)
What will happend with the release of the cdma iphone? Google its time to worried.
Adding Verizon ? 3 million the first quarter.
@Mac Daddy
Absolutely right, if it wasn’t for the iPhone, we would still using crappy little screens with crappy little functions.
…but we have strategy! I like our strategy…I like it a lot.
Ballmer seemed to be the only one that liked Microsoft’s strategy. Most Microsoft shareholders and consumers hated it… a lot.
Apparently Ballmer never noticed that Google was offering Android OS for free.
It’ll be sweet to see when the iPhone is released on Verizon how much those activation figures will jump. Maybe 400,000 activations a day for a few months. Activations really don’t mean much. It’s how much Apple is getting for each iPhone and how many paid downloads those phones generate that really matters.
Last time Apple talked about the number of activations per day, Goggle was very quick to respond. If they don’t respond within a week, we all know the jig is up.
I’m guess the Verizon rumors and subsequent official announcement have frozen Android sales this last month or so.
It is actually impossible to claim that Google ever lead since Apple shipped 366 000 iOS devices per day in </b>average</b>.
With Google crossing 300 000 devices per day in middle december, it is obvious that Android never topped iOS.
… and that’s before Verizon iPhone and iPad 2.
Besides, it really does not matter how many Android “activations” there are compared to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. “Android” is not a product. It is a collective platform made up of many hardware makers, each making several devices. If you compare any Apple iOS product to any single Android product, it’s not even close in terms of either unit sales or profitability. If you compare any single company with Android-based products to Apple, it’s not even close.
Apple is making most of the available profit in the market, and that money fuels future development in the platform. Whatever profit Android generates (after losing money on two-for-one fire sales) is scattered among dozens of hardware makers, and the primary software developer (Google) makes no direct profit from the sale of an Android device.
Apple main concern is meeting or exceeding its internal unit sales, revenue, and profit goals for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. They can basically set their manufacturing rate to meet those goals.
If that’s 366,000 iOS devices reported being shipped, imagine how many are not reported or are backlogged.
@ bkire
Since only Apple makes iOS device, unless Apple is lying about the quarterly unit sales numbers, I don’t think there is any problem with “how many are not reported.”
As for “backlogged,” those are either delayed sales or lost sales (when the customer does not want to wait and gets something else). The delayed sales will mostly average out over time, meaning if a sale is delayed from this quarter to next quarter, there’s one extra sale next quarter, and next quarter there may be a sale that’s delayed into the following quarter. The lost sales are probably significant, but Apple is selling every iPhone it makes as fast as they are being made.
It is simple math based on the earnings announcement. They did tell that over 50% of iPods sold were iPod Touch.
19.4M iPods with 50%+ iPod Touch ~ 10M iPod Touch
16.2M iPhones
7.3M iPads
= 33.5M iOS devices in the quarter
iOS devices per day = 33.5M/90 days = 372,222 per day