Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel. It is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance. It was unveiled in November 2007, with the first commercial Android device launched in September 2008. The current stable version is Android 11, released on September 8, 2020.
About Android (operating system) in brief
Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel. It is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance. It was unveiled in November 2007, with the first commercial Android device launched in September 2008. Android has been the best-selling OS worldwide on smartphones since 2011 and on tablets since 2013. As of May 2017, it has over two billion monthly active users, the largest installed base of any operating system. The current stable version is Android 11, released on September 8, 2020. The source code has been used to develop variants of Android on a range of other electronics, such as game consoles, digital cameras, portable media players, PCs and others. Some well known derivatives include Android TV for televisions and Wear OS for wearables, both developed by Google. About 70 percent of Android smartphones run Google’s ecosystem; competing Android ecosystems and forks include Fire OS or LineageOS. The name and logo are trademarks of Google which impose standards to restrict \”uncertified\” devices outside their ecosystem to use Android branding. Google acquired Android Inc. in July 2005 for at least USD 50 million. Its key employees, including Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White, joined Google as part of the acquisition. The first commercially available Android device was the HTC G1, also known as T-Mobile Dream1, announced on September 23, 2008. On November 5, 2007, the Open handset Alliance unveiled itself with a goal to develop the first truly open and comprehensive mobile platform for mobile devices.
Within a year, the alliance faced two other open source competitors, Symbian and T- mobile, and announced the Android Dream 1, which is now known as Android Dream 2, and Android Dream 3, which was announced on November 14, 2007. The Android Dream1 was the first smartphone running the Android operating system to go on sale in the U.S. and Canada. The Google Play Store features over 3 million apps, including Google Chrome, Google Play and associated Google Play Services development platform. It also includes Google Mobile Services, which includes core apps such as Google Chrome and the digital distribution platform Google Play. Google Play is the largest app store in the world, with more than 1 billion apps available for Android devices. Google has also developed its own version of Android, called Google Play OS, which runs on Android smartphones, tablets and smartwatches. Android was originally developed by Andy Rubin and Rich Miner as an advanced operating system for digital cameras. Rubin described the Android project as ‘tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences’ in October 2003. The early intentions of the company were to develop an advanced Operating System for cameras, and this was the basis of its pitch to investors in April 2004. An early prototype had a close resemblance to a BlackBerry phone, with no touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard, but the arrival of 2007’s Apple iPhone meant that Android had to go back to the drawing board. In December 2006, both Nokia and BlackBerry announced both touch-based smartphones.
You want to know more about Android (operating system)?
This page is based on the article Android (operating system) published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 19, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
