Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Internet giant Google, revealed his company’s milestones for the second quarter of 2013 in a conference call earlier today. As Google grows, so does its Android smartphone operating system and digital application marketplace.
First of all, Google as a whole has reported $14.11 billion in consolidated revenue. The company posted earnings of $9.56 per share, which was slightly lower than the $10.80 per share that analysts had anticipated and disappointed the market somewhat. Downward pressure on ad prices was blamed. Still, the $14.11 billion figure puts Google at a 19 percent increase from the same quarter last year.
The Android operating system is on the fast-track toward its 1 billionth device activation, which is likely to happen before the end of this year. Page announced that, currently, there are 1.5 million Android activations happening each day. “That’s pretty amazing given the first Android phone launched less than five years ago,” Page said. He also shared that Android has hit the 900-million mark for global activations.
“At Google I/O in 2012 there was roughly 400 million, so it more than doubled in 2013. By the end of the year we’ll probably be well past the 1 billion mark, and come Google I/O 2014 we’re assuming that Larry will again go up on stage and announce that there is now nearly 1.4 billion,” stated Android Community. “The rate of activations isn’t slowing down anytime soon either. With Google Glass, smartwatches, game consoles and more all running Android, it will only continue to climb.”
Piggybacking on the success of the OS itself, the Google Play store also hit a major milestone. The conference call revealed that the digital marketplace has surpassed 50 billion app downloads – a figure that Apple’s rival App Store reached in May.
“Page also noted during the call that more money has been paid out to app developers in the first half of this year than it was in all of last year, marking the growth of the Android app market,” wrote Mashable.
As the Android platform grows, Google might have a chance at beating Apple to the distant milestone of 100 billion app downloads.
The entire Google Q2 2013 earnings call can be heard here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2kBKR–v0k