Google announces 400-million Android devices, 20bn app downloads

There are now 400-million devices running Android and they’re downloading apps like crazy.

That massive number was announced by Google senior vice president of engineering Vic Gondutra at the internet giant’s I/O conference.

This, says Gondutra, translates to one-million new Android device activations every day and around 12 device activations a second.

That’s substantial growth even from the 700 000 activations Larry Page said the mobile OS was getting in January during an earnings conference call.

Google says much of that growth occurred in emerging markets such Indonesia.

Android is the world’s most popular smartphone OS and owns 56% of the market.

Here’s the rub though, if only 7.1% of Android devices are currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, which rolled out in late 2011, how long will it take before the majority of those devices are running Jellybean?

Those 400-million users have downloaded some 20-billion apps. Yipes.