When Google announced at I/O that they’ve reached 900 million activation’s, we knew that it wouldn’t be long until they reach the magical number – 1 billion activations.
Before we know it, Android we’ll surpass the total number of Windows installations, which is somewhere around 1.4 billion, and then Android will take its rightful place as the #1 platform in the world, as right now it’s only second to Windows, in terms of user reach. Seeing how Android activation’s are growing at a rate of 1.5 million per day, then Android should become the #1 OS in about a year from now, or by the end of 2014. Not bad for a six-year-old OS (at that point in time). Not bad at all.
This news comes along right before the IFA event, and also brings the news that there won’t be an Android 5.0 release this year, as expect, and it also won’t be called Key Lime Pie, but instead it will be version 4.4, and will be called KitKat. I find it really strange that there won’t be a truly major release of Android this year, and that instead Google is releasing 2 minor ones right after each other.
Android 4.3 was released in July with the new Nexus 7, and now Android 4.4 is rumored to be released in October along with the new Nexus phone. Only about 3 months separate them. I wonder if this is really because they couldn’t meet the deadline, and because Android 5.0 is a really big upgrade, or because they intend to launch upgrades a lot more often in the future – like 4 per year instead of two. Maybe this is their way of getting faster upgrades to all of those 1 billion Android users.
I do wonder if this new Android 4.4 will be a little more oriented towards the users with user-centric features, considering 4.3 was more about under the hood improvements. I doubt Google would go for so long without any real user-centric features, so I think we can expect some cool new features or UI improvements, too (especially on the tablet side). This new version is rumored to come out as soon as next month, so we won’t have to wait too long to check it out.