A N D R O I D S

Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California, United States in October 2003 by Andy Rubin (co-founder of Danger), Rich Miner (co-founder of Wildfire

Communications, Inc.), Nick Sears (once VP at T-Mobile), and Chris White (headed design and interface development at WebTV)

Android is a LINUX-based OPERATING SYSTEM for mobile devices such as SMARTPHONES and TABLET COMPIUTERS, developed by

GOOGLE in conjunction with the OPEN HANDSET ALLIANCE

The first Android-powered smartphones were sold in Q1 2009, and has since grown to become the biggest

smartphone operating system

Android was initially developed by Android Inc, whom Google financially backed and later purchased

in 2005

The unveiling of the Android distribution in 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 86

Hardware, software and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing Open standards for mobile devices.[

Google releases the Android code as open source, under the Apache License.

The ANDROID OPEN SOURCE PROJECT (AOSP) is tasked with the maintenance and further

development of Android

Android has a large community of developers writing applications (“apps") that extend the functionality of the devices. Developers

write primarily in a customized version of JAVA

and apps can be downloaded from online stores such as GooGLE PLAY (formerly Android Market), the app

store run by Google, or third-party sites

In June 2012, there were more than 600,000 apps available for Android

and the estimated number of applications

downloaded from Google Play was 20 billion.

Android became the world's leading smartphone platform at the end of 2010.

For the first quarter of 2012, Android had a 59% smartphone market share worldwide

As of third quarter 2012, there were 480 million devices activated and 1.3 million activations per

day.