New Delhi: Android, which maintains its leadership position in the smartphone operating system market, turns 5. It was five years ago when Google had announced to the world its Android OS and the first handset to run Android, T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream). The project had been in rumours for a long time before Google finally unveiled its first Android smartphone.
"We (T-Mobile and Google) had been working for months and months with a small team in Building 44 in Mountain View, CA. We had seen about 9 different versions of the new "Homescreen" for Android and I still wasn't completely certain we had seen the last one. I remember Fridays being "Donut Day" at the cafe there, and the arcade where I would spend my lunch with a bunch of Android coders playing old school video games - the team was bursting with excitement over what they were building and bringing to the world," said Des Smith, a member of the original Android team, in a post on Google+.
Today, Android accounts for around 80 per cent of the global smartphone market. In other words, four out of five smartphone around the world run on Google's Android OS.
Android has been one of the primary growth engines of the smartphone market since it was launched in 2008. In every year since then, Android has effectively outpaced the market and taken market share from the competition. In addition, the combination of smartphone vendors, mobile operators, and end-users who have embraced Android has driven shipment volumes higher. Even today, more vendors are introducing their first Android-powered smartphones to market.
The Android operating system, acquired by Google in 2005, has also been a runaway success, enabling third-party handset makers like Samsung to overtake Apple Inc while also spawning a massive economy of third-party apps that are only loosely affiliated with Google.
Comments
0 comment