Google said on Tuesday that every day around 400 thousand of Google Android-based devices are activated and that so far around 100 million Android-powered products have been sold to date. The company also indicated that from now on it would attempt to ensure that one version of operating system is installed across all eco-system.

Google Android emerged first in late 2008 and in less than three years time it became the No. 1 mobile operating system. The popularity of Android was conditioned by the fact that manufacturers of mobile phones could customize it and several different versions of the OS were available. However, with multiple flavours of Android on hundreds of phones, user experience of the platform is rather unpredictable, moreover, software designers have to ensure that their applications work on all recent releases. With the 100 millionth Google Android operating system activated, Google wants to change that.

Over the past two and a half years, Google has shipped eight releases of Android and there are now more than 310 Android devices around the world, of all shapes and sizes. This week Google talked about its next version of Android code-named Ice Cream Sandwich. The company's goal with Ice Cream Sandwich is to deliver one operating system that works everywhere, regardless of device.

"Ice Cream Sandwich will bring everything you love about Honeycomb on your tablet to your phone, including the holographic user interface, more multitasking, the new launcher and richer widgets," said Hugo Barra, product management director of Android at Google.

The Android ecosystem has been moving really fast over the last two and a half years and rapid iteration on new and highly-requested features has been a driving force behind Android’s success. But of course that innovation only matters if it reaches consumers. In order to solve that, Google announced founding team of industry leaders, including many from the Open Handset Alliance, who will be working together to adopt guidelines for how quickly devices are updated after a new platform release, and also for how long they will continue to be updated. The founding partners are Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola and AT&T, and Google welcomes others to join.

Google said that from now on the new devices from participating partners will receive the latest Android platform upgrades for 18 months after the device is first released, as long as the hardware allows.

Google also announced that it had developed Android Open Accessory to help developers start building new hardware accessories that will work across all Android devices.

Tags: Google, Android, Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola, AT&T