More than 600 Android-running phone models were launched this past year

Many children look at their collections of Pokemon cards and shout for all to hear, “They’re all mine!” It’s fair to wonder if Google had the same impulse when it took the stage at the Google I/O 2016 conference and declared that more than 600 phone models running Android were released in the last year. The company took this grand opportunity to point out just how popular the handsets are, reflected in the fact that Android is the most popular operating system in the world.

But the company wasn’t finished with its unabashed bragging. The firm went on to explain that across the same time period, users installed more than 65 billion apps. The photo service Google Photos, launched at last year’s I/O, has more than 200 million active users. That’s a fair amount. Then again, it’s not surprising considering that the app is the product of cutting out the photos section from Google Plus to create an app where people who use other social services might feel better about keeping their photos before spreading them across the internet. To make sure you know just how good Google is at identifying your photographs it also says that users have uploaded over 24 billion selfies. Perhaps we’re in need of some self-reflection.

Aside from the phones out there, the company has revealed that there are 12 different companies creating Android Wear smartwatches. The company has also sold over 25 million Chromecasts.

Quick not to let such valuable, and self-worth-approving information, go to waste, the company’s Twitter accounts latched on to and reiterated the scale of their audience.

“Android is the most popular OS in the world.” 600+ different Android smartphones launched this past year alone. #io16

— Google (@google) May 18, 2016

Google is in the middle of a transition, and is actively linking its different branches together, with automatic updates coming to Android N, the Play Store coming to Chrome OS, and Instant Apps lowering the threshold for making your own apps available for others to try. Back in 2013, approximately 33 percent of the company’s user base was using the latest version of Android, 4.4 KitKat. That number still holds true today, in the sense that roughly 32.5 percent of Android owners are using 4.4 KitKat. As the company’s latest Android software isn’t widely adopted outside of high-end devices, it seems like the company is attempting to narrow down the gap between the users of its different devices and operating systems.

At the very least it’s still making more money than your average human citizen could ever hope to see in a lifetime. Regardless of whether they’re paying up in court or not.

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/1WJuRj7
Dan Isacsson