Google’s Andy Rubin has revealed that the company is seeing more than 700,000 new Android activations each day.

Rubin, who is senior VP of mobile at Google, announced the figure on Google+ (natch) and further clarified that activations means newly sold devices, which makes the number all the more impressive:

and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don’t count re-sold devices), and “activations” means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service.

While each new activation doesn’t necessarily mean Android is getting a new customer — as many folks may upgrade, or perhaps get a second device — a look at previous activations rates announced by Google shows impressive growth.

  • August 2010: 200,000 activations per day
  • June 2011: 500,000 activations per day
  • July 2011: 550,00 activations per day (130 million devices, 6 billion downloads to date)
  • October 2011:  576,900 activations per day, from May-October (190 million devices to date)

It isn’t just handsets that are flying off the shelves too as Android’s app store — Android Market – passed 10 billion downloads earlier this month, with users averaging 53 apps per device, which is still short of 83 on the iPhone.

This ever-increasing growth in users and usage is what Google chairman Eric Schmidt believes will see the Android operating system topple Apple’s iOS as the first choice for developers. Schmidt recently revealed that he sees the change taking place within 6 months, by which time Android could be activating more than 1 million devices per day, if it continues to grow at its current rate.