The growth of Google's Android platform is undeniable, and one analyst says Google is now activating 350,000 Android devices every day.
According to Brian Pitz, an executive director and senior research analyst at UBS Investment Bank, that's a 16 percent increase from just a few months ago, when Google's vice president of engineering, Andy Rubin, tweeted that the company was activating more than 300,000 Android phones daily.
That announcement came just two months after Google chairman Eric Schmidt divulged that Google was activating 200,000 Android devices per day.
A spokesperson for Google would only confirm Rubin's December tally, saying that there are currently "over 300,000 Android devices activated daily." But if Pitz is correct, his analysis is in line with figures released by Gartner earlier this week, which said Android is in line to overtake Symbian as the most popular smartphone operating system worldwide by the end of the year. According to Gartner, Android will only continue to gain steam, capturing nearly half of the smartphone OS market in 2012.
On the other hand, Gartner also predicted that Apple will maintain its position as the second-place mobile platform with iOS through 2014. However, it said Apple will peak this year, securing about 20 percent of the space. There have been rumors that Apple won't release the iPhone 5 this summer as expected. Although these reports are unconfirmed, it's possible Apple would want to release a phone, even if it's just an intermediate update, in order to complete with the rapid growth of Android.
Part of Android's growth can be attributed to the openness of the platform and the fact that it's available across a wealth of devices. But this has led to some criticism about fragmentation, prompting Rubin to pen a blog post that defended Android and insisted that the company remains committed to developing an open platform.
Pitz also noted in his report that Google has been very successful through its mobile advertising platform, AdMob, delivering more than two billion ad impressions every day.