The number of Android devices being activated each day has risen to 1.3 million, according to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.

Schmidt made the claim during Motorola’s launch event yesterday, where the smartphone manufacturer announced the release of three new handsets. Motorola’s mobile arm was recently purchased by Google for £7.9b.

The search giant’s CEO also claimed that there are now 480 million Android devices being used worldwide.

In June of this year Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice president of mobile, reported that 900,000 Android devices were being activated daily, meaning that the number of new handsets with Google’s mobile platform which are entering use has grown by 44% in the last three months.

However, Android Gingerbread still remains the most popular version of the platform, despite having been released in December 2010 and being twice surpassed by newer versions. According to Google’s own data, Gingerbread has around a 60% share of the Android market with Ice Cream Sandwich now having around 16%.

The latest version of the software, Jelly Bean, now accounts for around 1% of all Android devices in use.