Android Grew A Whopping 500 Percent In India Last Year


Bangalore: More than one million android activations are happening around the world in a day and the statistics places India among the most Android loving countries. According to Hugo Barra, director of product management, Android, India saw a whopping 500 percent growth in Androids in the last one year.

The fact was revealed at the ongoing Google’s I/O developers conference. "Android is a truly global phenomenon. We now have 400 million Android devices. In countries like Brazil, India and Thailand we have seen it grow by 500% in the last one year,” Barra said. He also showed a heat map representing the number of Android activations around the world in which India was depicted in yellow color, indicating high number of activations.    

The whopping growth of Android in the country may be due to the vast range of Android powered devices available in the market from Rs 5000 to Rs 40,000. Apple’s iOS powered devices are above the reach of an average Indian. Moreover other platforms like Blackberry, symbian and Windows failed to provide the user experience and features offered by Android and iOS.

Android has a 59 percent share in the Smartphone market as on May 2012, followed by Apples iOS with a market share of 23 percent. Among the Android vendors, Samsung leads the Indian Smartphone market with a share of 45 percent, which the company hopes to increase to 60 percent by this year end.  

The latest version of Android, Jelly Bean, announced at the conference will come with a support for Hindi, inbuilt in the OS.