According to android icon design guidelines (here, see table #1), developer needs to provide status bar icons of next sizes:
Status Bar 24 x 24 px (LDPI) 3
Warning: regardless of whether or not the answer was correct when written, it appears not to be correct now. See https://www.google.com/design/spec/style/icons.html for the current guidelines.
It just seems to be an error. (Note that as of 2010-12-04, they've also crossed their references to figures 4 and 5 on that page.)
As Lex points out, they have the correct number further down, in the "Status bar icon" section.
They also dictate a 2-pixel "safeframe" on all sides at 25x25 which the shape of your icon must fit within, though it seems that it is okay to have some aliasing-related stuff stick out, but only on the sides, for this type of icon. (Meaning that you really want to aim for 21x21 at that size.)