Google announces bumper financials and 550,000 Android device activations daily

ADVERTISING BROKER Google has announced a large jump in year on year revenues and made the staggering announcement that 550,000 Android devices are being activated daily.

Google's financial results for the second quarter of 2011, the first with Larry Page as CEO, had very little wrong about them. A 32 per cent increase in year on year revenue to just over $9bn with profits of $2.51bn simply cannot be sniffed at. As impressive as that was, Page's claim that Google has loaded Android onto 130 million handsets and that figure is growing at the rate of 550,000 a day really highlighted Google's dominance in the growing smartphone market.

Google's earnings release singled out revenues from the UK, which accounts for 11 per cent of the firm's revenues. While the percentage of revenue that the UK provides Google hasn't changed in the past 12 months, the fact it has held steady as overall revenue has grown 32 per cent is rather impressive.

Ultimately for Google the number of adverts it can sell makes all of this possible, and the firm reported an 18 per cent rise in paid clicks from the same period last year. Perhaps the only blot on Google's copybook was a two per cent drop in paid advertising from the previous quarter.

Google said, "We expect to continue to make significant capital expenditures" and reported a war chest of $39.1bn to go out and buy whatever takes its fancy.

A few months ago Google announced that it was activating 400,000 Android smartphones a day, and while Page's figure of 550,000 daily activations is likely go both up and down as the months progress, there's no doubt that the army of Android devices has well and truly arrived.

While Google's share price fell all day yesterday, since the earnings report and at the time of publication it was up over 12 per cent, hovering just below the $600 mark in pre-market trading. It seems investors believe Google has a lot more potential in the coming months. µ