Remember back on September 20, 2008, when Android was first released? At the time, no one owned a single Android device. Now, Google says that over 550,000 new Android devices are activated every single day. Furthermore, a grand total of 200M+ Android devices exist in 137 countries, and in August of 2011, Canalys estimated that Android holds 48% of the smart phone market share.

But that was just the beginning for Google. By June of 2011, 6 billion applications were downloaded from the Market. In addition, “Android applications run in a sandbox, an isolated area of the operating system that does not have access to the rest of the system’s resources, unless access permissions are granted by the user when the application is installed. Before installing an application, Android Market displays all required permissions”. This feature demonstrates the immense security of Android that led the operating system into allegedly becoming the smart phone OS of the U.S. army.

Now that you know how Android started and became what it is today, you can understand why the operating system is the most popular in the whole world.

After hearing all of the numbers about where Android stands in the market, you would probably agree that the Android invasion has been long complete. Well, Google disagrees. With all of the new products, features, and updates that Google is pushing out, there seems to be no end to the invasion. Google+, Google Music, Ice Cream Sandwich, and quite possibly the best smart phone on the market today (Galaxy Nexus). And that is just what Google has accomplished in the last year.

With CES just around the corner, the iPhone 4S already out of the way, and Ice Cream Sandwich open to other devices, 2012 could result in an explosion of new phones and tablets running Android.

Is there any end to where Android will go? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.