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Googles Android leader Andy Rubin took to Twitter to brag about the success of the open-source operating system, boasting that there are more than 900,000 activations of Android per day. In what could be seen as an effort to steal some of Apples thunder ahead of their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week, Rubin also used the message to deny rumors that he was leaving the company. No plans to leave Google, he Tweeted. Oh, and just for meme completenessthere are over 900,000 android devices activated each day :-).
Robert Scoble, a tech blogger who recently posted photos of Googles Sergey Brin wearing the companys Project Glass spectacles, first floated the rumor concerning Rubins departure. Rubin, as it turns out, is apparently not leaving Google to head a startup company called CloudCar. Scoble later updated his posting to reflect Rubins denial.
Along with Apple, its main competitor in the mobile device space, Android and iOS account for 82 percent of the overall smartphone market, according to IDC. Androids total market share for the quarter was 59 percent, compared with 36.1 percent a year ago, while iOS claimed a 23 percent share, up from 18.3 percent, as Apple boosted shipments from 18.6 million units to 35.1 million. Of the 90 million Android smartphones that shipped, 45.4 percent were from Samsung, the worlds largest mobile phone manufacturer.
With the help of a rapidly growing Chinese market, which will represent a quarter of all Android phone shipments, the platform is set to dominate the smartphone market through 2017, according to a May report by Ovum. The companys report said it expects Android to hold 48 percent of the smartphone market by 2017, while growing at a slower pace than it has recently. In 2011, Androids share jumped to 44 percent, up from 2010s 17 percent.
There is one area where iOS holds a distinct lead over Android, however, and thats when it comes to application development. A steady stream of powerful, slick applications is a crucial component to the success of any mobile operating system, and a report from Flurry Analytics found that for every 10 apps that developers build, roughly 7 are for iOS. Part of the reason has to do with the fragmentation that comes with Android, which is offered on a huge array of mobile devices. Apples iOS runs only on the iPad and iPhone, which allows developers to more easily create applications. With Android, the report noted, devices, as well as firmware, contributed to fragmentation.