The head of Google Inc.’s Android software business announced today that consumers are activating more than half a million Android devices every day, an increase of about 25 percent from early May.

In an early morning tweet on Tuesday, Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice president of Mobile, said the Android growth rate is currently at 4.4 percent week-over-week in his announcement on Twitter. Yet Rubin did not disclose how many of the devices being activated are smart phones and how many are tablet computers, “a relatively new competitive battleground in wireless devices,” Reuters said.

However, skeptical of the half-million activations number, bigger is not always better, retorted one Twitter follower of Rubin’s, who tweeted, “@Arubin hard to believe, and just because there are more doesn’t make it better.”

Yet a recent industry study projects the global smartphone market is forecast to grow 55 percent year over year in 2011, with the Android to grow more than 40 percent of the market in the second half of the year, TechZone reported June 9.

And despite the lack of current information on which types of devices are being activated, back in December 2010, Rubin tweeted that 300,000 Android devices were being activated every day.

One thing is certain: Apple significantly trails Google in the market, Business Insider said Tuesday, calculating iPhones, iPads and iPod touches, Apple’s activation rate was about 325,000 per day.

“Android smart phones have surpassed Apple Inc’s iPhone in popularity as the Google software powers the main handsets of manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, HTC Corp and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.,” Reuters said.

Android now owns 36.4 percent of the smartphone market in the U.S., according to ComScore, leading iPhone’s 26 percent, Research in Motion’s 25.7 percent and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7’s 6.7 percent.

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