Google: 900 million Android activations to date, 48 billion app installs

900 million Android devices have been activated since Google’s mobile operating system launched to consumers four and a half years ago. The impressive stat was revealed by Android / Chrome boss Sundar Pichai on stage at Google I/O 2013. Chairman Eric Schmidt has forecasted that Android could cross the billion activation mark by the end of this year.

Pichai also shared new details on Google Play’s momentum with consumers: over 48 billion apps have been installed thus far — not far off from the 50 billion Apple’s iOS platform is about to reach. 2.5B of those came in the last month alone. Revenue per user has also doubled year-over-year.