Google Android activations hit 500,000 a day

Android activations have surpassed 500,000 new devices a day, according to the project's co-founder, Andy Rubin.

Rubin, who is senior vice president of mobile at Google and head of the company's Android project, announced the milestone in a Twitter post.

"There are now over 500,000 Android devices activated every day, and it's growing at 4.4 [per cent week over week,]" Rubin tweeted.

The announcement comes nearly seven months after Google reported 300,000 Android activations a day and just weeks after saying at the I/O conference that the platform saw some 400,000 new devices activated every day.

The soaring sales figures for Android come as industry analysts predict major gains in the overall smartphone space.

Pyramid Research reported that the smartphone market grew at a rate of 47 per cent annually from 2006 to 2010, and will continue to expand at an average of 29 per cent through to 2015.

Analysts have been bullish on the Android platform's role in this expansion. Gartner recently estimated that nearly half of the world's smartphones will run some version of Android by 2015.