The Android march continues: 100,000 Android handsets activated dailiy

I’ve just sat and watched through the Google I/O Day 2 keynotes about Android. Despite the misgivings I have about the platform’s increasing fragmentation and their rather ‘plain vanilla’ UI that isn’t necessarily that useful for ‘new’ consumers, you have to respect what Google’s doing with the platform.

Vic Gundotra, the VP Engineering for Google did a super keynote and definitely set the cat amongst the pigeons with his announcement that Android is currently activating 100,000 handsets daily. That’s not shipped, or purchased — that’s ‘activated’. Whenever you buy an Android device, you can’t use it until you activate it with a Google account so the activation statistics are a really good way of measuring the numbers of consumers adopting the platform. Vic also pointed out that in the United States, Android is second only to RIM now in terms of smartphone sales.

Tomi Ahonen points out that 100,000 a day activations means roughly 36m devices activated per year — bigger than the Jesus Phone.

What does this mean for Nokia?

Well, Nokia’s nowhere in America so it doesn’t mean much at all, there. But when it comes to Europe and other worldwide markets, I wonder just how the numbers will look this time next year.

If you missed the Android keynote live, you can watch it on Youtube.