500 Million Android devices activated globally | Hacker News Reader

500 Million Android devices activated globally

plus.google.com

Probably more than that, I would imagine there are plenty of Android devices that don't phone home. (Kindle Fire, for instance)

Now this is really perfect timing to steal attention from the upcoming Apple press event. One might wonder if the time of the announcement is just accidental.

the announcement was last week at a motorola press event, so ...

Is there any data on how many of those users spend money on apps?

Almost certainly substantially less than iOS users, which I suppose is the point you were going for, but I think that whole rabbit hole is a red herring.

The model of "sell apps to people for money" no longer works. We've depleted that gold mine (or vespene geyser, if you will). The only people who are having any fun on mobiles right now are services with mobile portals (think Yelp, AirBnb, eBay, etc) and sketchier-than-not "social gaming" apps.

Citation needed.

iOS and Android app-buying behaviour seems to be converging.

In 2011, 39% of iOS users had more than 20 paid apps. In 2012 that has dropped to 26%, while Android has climbed to 19%[1].

Additionally, "When it comes to paid-app refusers Android and Apple are now almost identical, with 6% of iPhone users and 7% of Android users having never spent money on an app."

[1] http://www.swiftkey.net/android-catching-up-with-iphone-on-p...

Statistics like this are not very meaningful. The only reason there are so many Android devices globally is because Google licenses the OS to crappy Asian handset makers.

I mean, it's not like 500 million people are using a high-quality device like Galaxy S3.

What's not meaningful about it?

Some of those crappy Asian handset makers make very good phones - the Chinese Android phones from ZTE, Meizu and Huawei are competitive with mid range phones from HTC, Samsung etc. Some are even in the same class as the S3 - eg, look at the benchmarks in the Meizu MX-4 review[1] (unfortunate iOS-like skin notwithstanding).

Even the low end phones give people who never had a computing device access to communications and the internet. How you claim that isn't meaningful?

[1]http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/meizu-mx-4-core-review/

it's not like 500 million people are using a high-quality device like Galaxy S3.

Sure, they don't have the latest greatest shiny, but so what? Its still market penetration, and unlike people just chasing shiny toys, they're looking for tools. And that's what they now have, a powerful tool that almost entirely everything the s3 does.

It doesn't have the most powerful graphics, and that userbase might mean targeting a lower API level. Thats about it.

I really don't see where you're going with that statement.

>>I really don't see where you're going with that statement.

I thought my statement was pretty simple. If there are two operating systems, and one is sold exclusively with a high-quality device, and the other is sold very cheaply with shitty phones, then when the latter's manufacturer says "we have 500 million devices running our OS" everyone is going to go "well, duh!"

That is 500 million potential users who would use google for search, use picasa to upload their photos or even Use Google Drive to store their data and Use Google+ for networking.

The mobile internet is well developed and affordable to even common man in most of the Asian countries.

And for a service like Google+, the it makes sense to have more people on the network.

I wonder what Google plans to do once, in a year's time or so, Android's userbase begins to slow, just as Facebook's has.

Hasn't showed any sign of slowing down yet, still increasing rapidly. If it starts to slow down, at least it's stil positive. Probably will be up to 2 million per day before the growth turns negative, and then it will be a long time before we even get back to the current 1 million per day mark.

Help people to make more babies perhaps?

Well there's a key difference; Google doesn't exactly _need_ continued super-rapid user growth on Android. The reason slowing growth is a problem for Facebook is that it's the only way they could justify their valuation (or more importantly, grow their company), other than better monetization of users, which is their other Big Challenge.

Also, the hypergrowth of Android is essentially driven just by the hypergrowth of mobile devices (since it's the most accessible OS for manufacturers and thus consumers across the world). The point of Android for Google was to foster this rapid growth of smartphone adoption without being under the thumb of a single vendor (especially one as capricious and overbearing as Apple). If it ever gets to the point that the world is saturated with smartphones, Google probably won't care that Android isn't the majority of that growth anymore.

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