On the eve when Apple announced its latest iPhone 5 smartphone, Google officially said that the number of Android-based devices that have been activated so far exceeds the number of iOS-powered gadgets activated since 2007 by solid one hundred million of units.

During the presentation of the iPhone 5, Apple said that that it had sold through over 400 million of devices powered by its iOS operating system, which includes iPhone, iPod touch and iPad products, since their first launch in mid-2007. Earlier on Wednesday, Google announced that total cumulative activations of Android-based devices exceeded 500 million since the first release in late 2008.

"Today is a big day for Android: 500 million devices activated globally, and over 1.3 million added every single day," said Hugo Barra, a director of product management of Android at Google, in a post on his Google+ wall.

With 1.3 million of Android devices activated daily, Google is clear ahead of Apple, which activated around 515+ thousand of iOS smartphones, tablets and media players every day in Q2 2012 (based on the company's financial report, not counting Apple TV).

However, it should be noted that the absolute majority of Android-based products are smartphones and the vast majority of them are inexpensive models. By contrast, Apple shipped 17 million iPad media tablets last quarter to claim nearly 70% market share, according to IDC. So far, Apple has shipped over 84 million iPads.

Google Android is also behind of Apple iOS in terms of number of applications available: the Android offers over  600 thousand apps, whereas iOS features over 700 thousand of programs for iPhone and over 250 thousand of applications tailored for iPad. According to Apple, every iOS customer uses more than 100 apps on average.

Tags: Google, Android, Apple, iOS, iPhone, iPod, iPad