Quarterly reports are to companies what New Year’s Day is to people: a chance to make new goals, review your progress so far, and have an extra drink. Google’s quarterly report for Q1 2011 was especially drink-worthy in several ways. The biggest bragging points of note are Google’s revenue, which broke all previous records, and Android, which CFO Patrick Pichette called an “amazingly blazing” platform.
Android is doing well, and although Google won’t tell us some of the core figures (such as the company’s market share in each of their countries of operation), we do have a lot of data that shows both Android’s market footing and impressive growth. One of the biggest items of note is a major benchmark in app downloads: the three billion mark.
Three billion isn’t actually as much as it seems to be, though, with Apple’s App Store having hit 10 billion earlier this year. What’s more important about the three billion benchmark is the momentum it represents; Google went from two billion to three billion in just two months. That’s more than twice as fast as the previous billion, and ten times faster than the first billion, so Android may just be closing the gap with Apple.
Google’s growth here is probably related directly to another figure provided by Google: 350,000 Android phones are activated each day. That’s a global figure, and the company didn’t release region-specific numbers for phone activation. However, they did state that they are strong in Japan, Korea, Europe, and (of course) the U.S.
[via Mashable]
