Two days after I posted a reminder that Google had not updated their Android activations for five months, Google updated their Android activations.

The new total is 750 million. My expectation (based on a rate of activation acceleration of 30,000 activations/day/week) was 800 million. Google did not update their download rate but it can be derived. Between September and March the average has been about 1.4 million/day. I had previously estimated that the rate of activation was 2 million/day.

This is a modest increase from the 1.3 million/day that was reported in September implying that activation acceleration has slowed.

After resetting the acceleration to 5,000 activations/day/week my new forecast for 1 billion activations moves to the end of August.

Coincident with this update on activations, Google reported that Andy Rubin has stepped aside as the head of Android and that Android and Chrome would be under the same management.

Putting aside the exit of the founder, the implications of the merger with Chrome will need significant contemplation.

Google occasionally reports data regarding Android. Very occasionally. The last time we had some data was in September 2012 when we learned that activations were running at 1.3 million per day and that a total of 500 million total activations had taken place.

As of today, being March 2013, the time between updates has reached five months. It’s the longest gap so far. Benedict Evans also notes that it’s been five months since the data regarding screen size stats has been updated on the Android developer site.

But we have to live with what we get and, in the absence of an update, the pattern of growth in Android, if sustained, looks like this:

Continue reading “Where are the Android users?”