Over 65,000 Android devices shipping every day

Google said that Android's openess is the key to its success

More than 65,000 devices running the Google's Android operating system are shipped everyday, according to Google chief executive Eric Schmidt.

Schmidt said at the company's annual shareholders meeting that Android is " going to be either the number one or number two player" in the market.

"Our partners are shipping about 65,000 Android handsets per day but, if you check the blogosphere, you'll discover that there are some reports that that number might be quite low," he said.

Schmidt claimed that this success is based on the platform's open strategy, and that this is in direct competition to Apple's closed system, although he stopped short of naming the iPhone manufacturer directly.

"Our strategy is very different from everybody else's. We license our code for free, so that's really pretty revolutionary and we're trying to build an entire ecosystem of openness, the inverse of the other guys, so if they say no, we say yes," he said.

Schmidt added that the firm would continue with its free, open approach to Android, as the more devices running its platform would enable the firm to reach a huge audience as smartphone sales are predicted to rocket.

"We're very happy to give away Android, the applications and the services that can be provided on a very large, very broad framework can be enormously valuable over the next five or 10 years," he added.

A report yesterday predicted that smartphone sales would reach 2.5 billion by 2015, driven in part by Google's Android platform running on both high-tier and low-tier devices in market across the world.