Android may top 1 billion activations by next year, predicts Google's Schmidt

Google chairman Eric Schmidt thinks that Android activations could top a billion by next year, as the operating system continues to reign over more than half of the mobile marketplace.

"We just announced 1.3 million activations of Android phones per day globally - per day," he underlined during a recent interview with AllThingsD.

That's with more than half a billion Android devices already activated globally.

"Do a little math with me," Schmidt asked. "If you're at 1.3 [million activations per day], times 365 [days a year], and of course that number doubling every six months or something like this."

"This is well more than a billion devices globally perhaps within a year."

Android vs Apple defining platform fight

Schmidt defined what 1 billion Android activations means in his company's constant tug-of-war with Apple.

"I believe that the Android-Apple platform fight is the defining fight in the industry today," Schmidt said, before noting Android's progress. "And I didn't say that two years ago."

As with any good fight, there's always a little smack talk and a good backhanded compliment.

"[Apple's has] an enormously large platform for developers, knowledge, cloud services, scale, and so forth." Schmidt went on to laud how many talented engineers Apple has, along with his rival's apps, content, and partnerships.

But that just set him up to say, "The Google platform, Android, is even larger."

"Surveys that we've seen of unit volume indicate that there are four times as many Android phones as there are iPhones."

We're all winners in the eyes of Schmidt

Google's scale has translated into a higher marketshare, with Android at 52.2 percent of active devices and Apple accounting for 33.4 percent, according to pre-iPhone 5 numbers.

But the former CEO of Google, which is now the second most valuable tech company behind Apple, said that the real winners are consumers.

"We have not seen in our industry platform-network fights of this scale."

With lower-cost devices and more innovative hardware teased by the Google chairman, Schmidt concluded, "And I go back to who's the beneficiary. And the beneficiary is you all - globally."