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James Martin/CNET
During the kickoff to its annual I/O developers conference, Google boasted of the success of its Android mobile operating system.
The Android platform has 1 billion active monthly users, up from the 538 million active monthly users logged last year, Google’s Sundar Pichai said at the Google I/O conference Wednesday. By topping that figure, Android is now the fourth Google service to have more than 1 billion monthly users. Google’s Search, Maps, and YouTube have already joined that club.
All that growth has helped boost usage. Google says 20 billion text messages are sent each day from Android devices and 93 million selfies are taken on a daily basis. The company’s Android phones are checked 100 billion times each day, Pichai said.
Moving to tablets, Pichai noted that 62 percent of all Android shipments are now slates. In 2012, that figure stood at 39 percent. Google’s YouTube has also proved popular among Android users. Last year, 28 percent of YouTube viewership came from the search company’s mobile platform. This year, that’s up to 42 percent. Pichai also indicated that app installs on Android devices are up 236 percent year-over-year.
Pichai’s comments kicked off a major event for Google and software developers. Google I/O is the search company’s annual confab to show developers and the world its software plans for the future. In recent years, it’s also been home to several hardware launches.
However, the announcements on the success of Android to this point appeared to be in direct response to comments made earlier this month by Apple CEO Tim Cook at WWDC, his company’s own developer conference.
Cook noted that his company has now sold over 800 million iOS-based devices, with the iPad accounting for 25 percent of those sales. Cook also said 130 million people bought their first iOS device in the last 12 months.
Apple’s data was a bit clearer than Google’s. While Google focused heavily on percentage gains, Apple provided raw numbers, including that its App Store now has 1.2 million apps and 300 million visitors each week. Apple also noted that 75 billion apps have been downloaded from its mobile marketplace so far.
