We can begin the analysis with some statistics where the Android activations last year were between 30.000 and 60.000 per day. We can pretty safely estimate that in the early months of 2010 the number of activations was around 50.000. That was when Android devices were launching in the United States. At spring,Android invasion to other markets begun, and the growth is phenomenal.
The number of Android devices is in exponential growth right now. All the manufacturers that decided to turn their strategy to higher-end mobile devices are now entering the market. However, the two giants in mobile, Nokia and Samsung, are supporting multiple platforms. Nokia does not officially support Android, although Android can be used in its N900 device.
Samsung has always supported many platforms, and it is now Bringing Bada OS to the market. Bada starts with mid-range devices. High end Samsung devices currently use Android. One very probable scenario is that Samsung will later heavily turn only to Bada after the Bada OS and its development environment have been matured. Another reason is that Android requires powerful hardware, and the price of the hardware is currently too high to low-end mobile devices. Samsung is a very strong player in the low end and it will not gift that part of its portfolio to competitors.
Two growth scenarios
The current growth rate of Android activations is roughly 8% per week. This results around 1,3M activations per day at the end of the year 2010. The cumulative number of activations with this model is about 120M units per year in 2010. That is a really huge number.
Another growth scenario is linear growth. Android grew 60.000 units in six weeks. This means 10.000 units per week. This gives cumulative sales of roughly 70.000.000 devices in 2010. Again, this is a huge number.
More modeling
We can continue this game for long, but there are at least two other, very simple calculations to do.
First is flat sales. Google activates 160.000 Androids every day all year round. That would mean exactly 58.240.000 units, or around 58M units per year.
Second try here is flat sales from June until the end of the year, but less units sold before that. It would mean roughly 42M units sold this year.
Finally
The truth is not in these models. I am expecting the Android device sales will stagnate at some point. The economical conditions are again worsening both in Europe and in the USA and this will most probably have a negative effect on consumer electronics sales. If your phone is working, you do not buy a new one. And if it is not working, you buy a cheap device.
