Google’s Android operating system is now running on 3 billion active devices, Google announced at its (virtual) I/O developer conference today. In a briefing before today’s event, the company also noted that there were 250 million active tablets running Android last year, which is likely a larger number than some expected, but which explains Google’s increased focus on these large-screen devices at I/O this year.
Traditionally, Google shares new device stats at I/O, but since it canceled the event last year, we didn’t get an update for 2020. The most recent number Google provided was 2.5 billion active devices in May 2019. That was up from 2 billion devices in 2017, so at least for the time being, this growth rate of about 500 million new devices every two years continues to remain true.
In comparison, Apple in January announced that it has an install base of 1 billion iPhones and that there are now a total of 1.65 billion active devices in its ecosystem, up from 1.5 billion devices a year before (this last number includes all active Apple devices, though).
