In a sea of flip phones and full keyboard BlackBerrys, a single decision by Google laid waste to the competition. That determination also put Google’s Android mobile operating system on an enduring collision course with Apple’s iPhone.
As Android, a small California software company that Google had recently purchased, was tinkering away, Apple announced the iPhone. That monumental January 2007 reveal upended traditional conceptions of what a mobile internet-enabled device could be. Instead of trying to cram the trappings of a computer into a tiny screen, with small menus, physical keyboards and styli, Apple designed a screen-only device better suited to our fingers.
It was a wakeup call for Google.
“If Google did not act, we faced … a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice,” said then-Google exec Vic Gundotra at the company’s 2010 I/O conference, relaying the thoughts of Android founder Andy Rubin. “That’s a future we don’t want.”
To shape that future to its liking, Google took a radical step: It made Android completely free and open source, available for any company to use and create devices around.
Which brings us to where we are today: a global market for mobile phones split between Apple and its Android rivals, most notably Samsung but also a handful of other brands, including Google’s own Pixel phones. Google’s bet on open-sourcing Android has paid off handsomely. The search giant’s $50 million purchase in 2005 led to $47.9 billion in Play Store app revenue in 2022 alone, according to Statista. Since the debut of the first Android phone in September 2008, Android has become the world’s most popular mobile operating system, with 3.3 billion users worldwide, about 41% of the global population.
Along the way, it’s had to wrangle with its diverse stable of Android hardware partners and rivals – a challenge that Apple doesn’t face – while pushing the pace on what smartphones can do. That includes folding in…
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