Google said that it has passed the 100 million activated Android device milestone, with 400,000 new Android terminals being activated every day. The figures, announced at the Google I/O developer event, come less than three years after the launch of the first Android smartphone – the HTC/T-Mobile G1. The company also used the event to unveil its anticipated online music service, Music Beta by Google, which will enable customers to upload their music collections to the cloud for streaming to computers or Android devices; and to announce the addition of movie rentals to Android Market. It also said that a “founding team of industry leaders” have agreed to adopt guidelines for how quickly Android devices are updated after a new platform release, and for how long they will continue to be updated after sale. Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola and AT&T have already signed up.

Google also reiterated its plans to unite its tablet and smartphone operating platforms in a single release, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, which is set to debut later this year. In an exclusive Mobile World Live interview, recorded before this week’s event, Dave Burke, Google’s director of engineering, noted that “Ice Cream Sandwich effectively brings the two together; it’s about bringing those developments that we’ve created on the tablet to the phone.” This release will also see Google making the platform source code available again, having been widely criticised for opting not to do so with the current tablet platform, Android 3.0. “As soon as we have the Ice Cream Sandwich version ready, we’re going to release it,” Burke said. At Google I/O, an update to the tablet platform was announced, called Android 3.1. Among the new features added are support for peripherals such as mice, trackballs, joysticks and gamepads; resizable homescreen widgets; and real-time transport protocol support for audio, so developers can directly manage on-demand or interactive data streaming to enable VOIP, push-to-talk, conferencing, and audio streaming.