Apple during its September 1 event directly took on Google’s claims of having 160,000 activations per day. Company chief Steve Jobs joked that others “throw out a lot of numbers” but said Apple was activating 230,000 iOS devices per day. He added that, unlike Google’s figures, this didn’t include OS upgrades.

The claims are largely accurate as Google, like Apple, doesn’t make a distinction between the natures of the devices it’s activating. Almost all Android activations are smartphones, while Apple’s is a mixture of iPads, iPhones and iPod touch players. Android tablets won’t factor heavily into Google’s lineup until this fall, when the Samsung Galaxy Tab and other non-phone devices start shipping.

Google is still believed to have overtaken iPhones in shipments, but the new figures show much higher overall use of iOS among all devices. Jobs added that Apple has shipped over 120 million iOS devices since they went on sale in 2007 and that the App Store is much busier, as over 6.5 billion app downloads have taken place since July 2008. The rate is now sitting at 200 apps per second.