700,000 Daily Activations Isn't Good News

Amit Runchal has a slightly different take on Andy Rubin’s revelation from two days ago that Google is now activating 700,000 Android devices a day. Says Runchal:

But as far as I can tell, the 700,000 number isn’t good for Android. It’s bad. It means that Android activation growth has slowed dramatically, by almost a factor of three.

Bonus points for calling out the ridiculous AllThingsD post in which Ina Fried suggests Google could be activating Android devices at a run rate of 900 million by the end of next year. As Runchal highlights, that’s significantly more than the total number of all smartphones that are expected to be sold all of next year.

So I guess Google will be responsible for every single smartphone sold — and another 300 million or so Android tablets by the end of next year. Meanwhile, in this scenario, Apple will sell zero iPhones. 

Sounds good. Sound math.