Lots of apples: Apple activating 230,000 new iOS devices every day

Statistics are not very exciting things.  Using them is usually the preserve of a politician attempting to justify the latest round of savage cuts or a scheme to tax sunshine.  But some interesting stats regarding Apple and Android phones have surfaced over the last few days as Google and Apple go into a public ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ row.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said recently that his company is activating around 200,000 smartphones and other devices running the Android system every day.  According to Reuters, smartphones running Google’s green robot topped the list among U.S. consumers in the second quarter.  In the period of April to June Google powered a third of all smartphones with RIM sliding into second place.

Not to be outdone by anyone, Techno saint Steve Jobs hit back.  He revealed that Apple is currently activating 230,000 new iOS devices every day.  “People are throwing around a lot of numbers as to how many devices their operating systems are activating every day,” he feverishly revealed.  Jobs also threw a cheeky hand grenade by suggesting that Google’s figure includes upgrades whereas Apple’s data does not.

Some other hefty numbers were dropped by Apple’s recent event too.  The company say that they have sold 120 million iOS devices since the launch of the now forgotten first iPhone and the App Store has now passed the whopping 6.5 billion downloads mark with 200 apps being downloaded every second.  Apparently the store overall has 250,000 apps available, while 25,000 of those are iPad apps.  The actual iTunes store has now done 11.7 billion song downloads, 450 million TV show downloads, 100 million movies and 35 million e-books.  The most impressive stat is that 160 million people have registered for an iTunes account.

So, pretty big numbers then.  It appears that Apple is still steaming ahead with iTunes and the rest of the market is playing catch up.  But there are signs that Android could actually become a credible threat to Apple’s dominance in the near future.  Fasten your seat belts folks.  The next few years could get interesting.