In 2004, Andy Rubin made an urgent call to his friend, Steve Perlman. Rubin’s start-up, Android, was in trouble, he explained. Rubin didn’t like asking for money again, but the situation was dire.
Android was made to fend off the possibility that Microsoft could repeat with phones what it had achieved with desktops: a virtual monopoly.
Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions.
It feels like we’ve been running Google’s mobile OS on our Android devices forever. However, it’s actually been less than 10 years since the first official Android phone made its debut for consumers to buy in stores.
As Rubin said in 2013, “The exact same platform, the exact same operating system we built for cameras, that became Android for cellphones.”
The creators of Android originally dreamed it would be used to create a world of “smart cameras” that connected to PCs, a founder said, but it was reworked for mobile handsets as the smartphone market began to explode.
Rubin said there was an opportunity at the time because even as hardware costs fell steeply due to commoditization, software vendors were charging the same amount for their operating systems, taking up an ever larger part of manufacturers’ budgets. As Android considered its product to be a platform for selling other services and products, the company aimed for growth, not per-unit income.
Now, its been 10 years and we have the android 9 now which is the Android pie. According to THE VERGE, That’s not just a huge accomplishment after 10 years; it’s also a huge change in how we should be thinking about computing and the internet.