Google data on Android activations is now getting scrutiny for excluding devices and entire regions, and therefore skewing downward the actual install-base for the Android operating system. Android-powered devices have seen great success in the past few years, growing to 900 million devices worldwide. This is especially true outside of the United States, where countries like China have overwhelmingly turned to Android smartphones. But not all of them are counted by Google’s regularly updated Android growth charts. Android devices that aren’t licensed to run apps sold through Google’s Android app store aren’t included in data used by Google. With Google’s latest sales data showing that daily Android activations have barely grown since last September, tech site GigaOM has raised the red flag as to how this is skewing Android market data.
In countries such as China and India where smartphone penetration is big and growing, many devices run Android without licensing from Google. On the device front, Amazon’s popular Kindle Fire, which is now available in 200 countries, also doesn’t count in Google’s numbers. Google-licensed Android devices and its Android app store are huge forces in the smartphone market, but GigaOM has rightly turned attention to how its reports can be misread to underestimate just how much Android is penetrating that market worldwide.
Source: GigaOm
