Android Application Development All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1

All about Android

In This Chapter

Your take on Android (depending on who you are)

A tour of Android technologies

Until the mid-2000s, the word “Android” stood for a mechanical humanlike creature — a root’n toot’n officer of the law with built-in machine guns, or a hyperlogical space traveler who can do everything except speak using contractions. But in 2005, Google purchased Android, Inc. — a 22-month-old company creating software for mobile phones. That move changed everything.

In 2007, a group of 34 companies formed the Open Handset Alliance. The Alliance’s task is “to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience.” The Alliance’s primary project is Android — an open, free operating system based on the Linux operating system kernel.

HTC released the first commercially available Android phone near the end of 2008. But in the United States, the public’s awareness of Android and its potential didn’t surface until early 2010. Where I’m sitting in 2014, Canalys reports that, in the year’s first quarter, 81 percent of all new smartphones in the world run Android.* (I know. You’re sitting reading this book sometime after 2014. But that’s okay.)

The Consumer Perspective

A consumer considers the mobile phone alternatives. ...