More Android Devices Activated Every Day Than Babies Born

At the Consumer Electronics Show today, we've learned this somewhat astonishing stat -- even by Google's standards. YouTube's global head of content, Robert Kyncl, gave a keynote address on Thursday, the show's second-to-last day, and told the audience that "there are more Android activations every day than babies born on earth," according to Forbes' Tomio Geron. The audience laughed, and other onlookers (including Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Vascellaro, who first pointed it out to us) marveled at it on Twitter. We decided to look into the numbers ourselves and have found indeed that Kyncl's claim is true. In late December, Google's Andrew Rubin announced on Google+ that there are over 700,000 Android devices powered up for the first time daily, up 27 percent from the month before. By comparison, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates there will be 367,419 babies born every day across the globe in 2012. So, Kyncl was completely right.