BARCELONA — The Android Market is growing at three times the rate of Apple’s App Store, according to a report released today by mobile security firm Lookout.

The number of Android Market apps increased about 127 percent since August, while the number of apps in the Apple App Store grew at a rate of 44 percent during that period, the company said in its latest App Genome Project report, which is based on an analysis of more than 500,000 mobile apps for those mobile platforms.

“The Android is maturing fast,”

After years of warnings from science fiction writers, it seems androids may finally be taking over the world.

For now, their influence is limited to mobile phones, in the guise of Google’s hugely popular operating system.

Mr Schmidt said that 300,000 Android-based phones are being activated each day, and more than 170 Android compatible devices are on the market.

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• Elephant in the room

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With changes taking place at blinding speed in the mobile technology marketplace, it’s a wonder insurers can keep up with their corporate-wide strategies. Upgrades, new smart phone and smart pad platforms, bolstered network speeds all play forward to insurers’ adopting a deferral approach to embracing new technologies.

A report issued this week of global country-level smartphone market data holds that Google’s Android has become the leading platform. Canalys published its final Q4 2010 results, which revealed shipments of Android-based smartphones reached 32.9 million, nudging Nokia’s Symbian platform out of first place with slightly at 31.0 million worldwide. Nokia did retain its position as the leading global smartphone vendor, with a share of 28%. The fourth quarter also saw the worldwide smartphone market continue to soar, with shipments of 101.2 million units representing year-on-year growth of 89%.

Although smartphone use is up, insurers’ choice of smartphone platforms is very much in a state of flux.

Android has not only triumphed as the No. 1 smart phone platform in the world, but it is very likely to surpass iPad as number one tablet OS, despite the iPad’s current 75 percent market share.

The observation comes from Neil Mawston, director at Strategy Analytics, who talked to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Explaining that Android tablets had gained a 22 percent market share in tablet shipments in the fourth quarter of last year — a quarter where the iPad was on fire and the nearest Android competitor, the Galaxy Tab, was a rather weak offering at best — Mawston said, “If you were to ask me in two years time, will Apple have less than 50 percent of the global tablet market, I think that’s a certainty.”

Just a year ago, Android handsets accounted for a slim 8.7 percent of the global smartphone market, with OS vendors such as Nokia, RIM, and Apple well in the lead, according to an industry survey. Not anymore. Also: Android establishes a beachhead in the tablet market.

We’ve already been hearing plenty of reports about how Google’s Android OS has been surging in the domestic and worldwide smartphone marketplaces, but the latest figures from the industry analysts at Canalys put the new mobile platform landscape on stark perspective, with Android sales seeing an extraordinary, 615-percent growth spurt in 2010 to topple Nokia’s Symbian platform off its throne.

Well, most of us knew this moment would come, with the only debate left being when this moment would come. Market analyst firm Canalys keeps track of worldwide smartphone shipments, and has concluded that in the fourth quarter of 2010, more Android smartphones were sold than Symbian phones. After a decade of supremacy, the Symbian dominance has been toppled (according to these figures, of course).

The Android mobile operating system thoroughly dominates the U.S. consumer smartphone market, while Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 OS is off to a slow start, according to a new survey by market researcher The NPD Group. And while Apple’s share of the consumer market is falling, the iPhone will likely get a boost once Verizon Wireless starts offering the top-selling handset in February.

The NPD report tracks U.S. consumers (18 an older) who bought a mobile phone during the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2010. It doesn’t include corporate/enterprise mobile phone purchases, however.

Here’s the breakdown for the U.S. consumer smartphone market in Q4 2010: