Of the 1.4 billion people actively using Android, 1 billion are using Google Play. Google had previously announced that there were more than a billion active users for Chrome, Android, and YouTube.

Gartner's latest smartphone market figures recorded the slowest ever year-over-year growth for Android — suggesting Google's mobile platform has hit peak penetration, taking around 82 percent of the global smartphone market in Q2 this year.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai talked up Android's growth in emerging markets, saying usage has "literally doubled" in certain markets over the last year — name-checking Indonesia and Vietnam.

"We've added 400 million active devices and the momentum is happening around the world — especially in emerging economies. In many, many places. In countries like Indonesia and Vietnam Android has literally doubled in the last year. And what's exciting about this is in most of these cases these are people who are adopting a smartphone for the first time," said Pichai.

This is a big accomplishment for Google, and CEO Sundar Pichai is already looking towards the next billion active users and he thinks the outfit is on track to bringing the next billion devices online.