The initial response to Google’s surprise announcement on Monday that it had inked a deal to acquire Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion was that it was a move largely to protect itself from the increasing patent attacks against Android. That could be why all five major manufacturers of Android devices appear to be thrilled with the deal. Should they be?

To say Android’s popular among consumers is like saying Godzilla’s a lizard. It’s a question of degree. More than 500,000 new Android devices were being activated daily, and the number was growing at 4.4 percent week over week, Google’s Andy Rubin tweeted in late June. comScore’s figures show that for the three-month period ending in May, Android was the leading mobile platform in the United States.

Android Honeycomb tablets are now on store shelves and vendor websites. Six months from Honeycomb’s release, tablet makers have finally optimized their hardware to fit the new made-for-tablets OS version to their larger-than-smartphone screens. But where are the apps?

Each day, more than half a million Android devices fire up. That’s the word from Andy Rubin, Google’s VP of engineering. In a Twitter post Monday, Rubin also noted the number of Android daily activations is growing 4.4 percent week over week. It was only two months ago that Google touted daily activations at 400,000.

Google has reportedly pulled several Android mobile applications that were lousy with malware from its official Android Market. This follows a report earlier this week from Lookout Mobile Security, which claimed it found dozens of apps in the market that contained malicious code.

Google has reportedly pulled several Android mobile applications that were lousy with malware from its official Android Market. This follows a report earlier this week from Lookout Mobile Security, which claimed it found dozens of apps in the market that contained malicious code.

Google’s Android Market may be rapidly catching up to Apple’s App Store in terms of sheer quantity, but app sales still vary greatly between the two, according to an analysis released on Friday by Distimo. The numbers give Apple a clear advantage in sales of applications. The report found that in March and April of this year, six paid iPhone applications generated 500,000-plus downloads in the United States.

Based on initial sales reports and some tablet market flip flops, the few Android tablets that have hit the shelves so far seem to have crashed and burned. Early sales figures indicate that no Android tab is coming close to being the much-awaited Apple iPad alternative. But will time heal all? Does the Android tablet just need the same growing time that consumers gave the iPad?

Much has been claimed by Google ever since the infant days of its Android mobile operating system. The claim it has seemed to champion the most is that its platform is open by nature. One of the biggest complaints about iOS has been Apple’s lockdown policy, so naturally, Google would want to make its platform’s openness a main selling point.