More than 900,000 Android devices activated every day

Despite the fact that mobile sales to Europe are drying up, Google is claiming that everything is going great.

Last week, Android based HTC lowered its  great expectations for the second quarter due to lower-than-anticipated sales to Europe. Sony, LG and Motorola Mobility are also not doing that well.

However Andy Rubin, who heads up development of the smartphone operating system at Google attempted to rally some optimism amongst hardware suppliers by giving out some cheery figures out on Twitter.

Rubin said that Android continues to grow, with over 900,000 devices based on the OS now being activated daily.

Last year at the same time there were only 500,000 devices per day activated. In February that figure had grown to 850,000 daily.

First-quarter shipments of Android smartphones were up 145 percent on a year earlier, giving the OS, a global smartphone market share of 59 percent. IDC keeps track of units sold to the channel as opposed to devices activated by users so it gives a more accurate picture.

But it seems that most of the growth is in the low margin cheap smartphones sold by ZTE and Huawei. While this does not matter much to Google, it is bad news for resellers who make more cash on the back of higher margin phones.

At the moment Apple, Samsung Electronics and HTC are the only vendors making money from smartphones.

Most analysts think that Android will rule smartphone operating system’s in 2016, although it is expected to be given a run for its money by Windows 8.

By the end of 2012, Android’s smartphone market share will be 61 percent, but in four years its share will have dropped to about 53 percent as others, like Microsoft wade in. 

Google is all set to roll out Jelly Bean at the end of the month the Google I/O conference that will bump up the version number to 4.1.

Still, Rubin had to trumpet something.  He was also denying rumours that he was about to leave Google.