The early intentions of the company were to develop an advanced operating system for digital cameras, and this was the basis of its pitch to investors in April 2004. Rubin described the Android project as having 'tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences'. was founded in Palo Alto, California, in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. 8.2 Anti-competitive challenges in EuropeĪndroid Inc.5.1 Scope of surveillance by public institutions.Android 12, released on October 4, 2021, is the latest version. As of May 2021, it has over three billion monthly active users, the largest installed base of any operating system, and as of January 2021, the Google Play Store features over 3 million apps. Software packages on Android, which use the APK format, are generally distributed through proprietary application stores like Google Play Store, Samsung Galaxy Store, Huawei AppGallery, Cafe Bazaar, and GetJar, or open source platforms like Aptoide or F-Droid.Īndroid has been the best-selling OS worldwide on smartphones since 2011 and on tablets since 2013. Some well known derivatives include Android TV for televisions and Wear OS for wearables, both developed by Google. 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, each with a specialized user interface. However the 'Android' name and logo are trademarks of Google which impose standards to restrict 'uncertified' devices outside their ecosystem to use Android branding. Competing Android ecosystems and forks include Fire OS (developed by Amazon) or LineageOS. Over 70 percent of Android smartphones run Google's ecosystem some with vendor-customized user interface and software suite, such as TouchWiz and later One UI by Samsung, and HTC Sense. However most Android devices ship with additional proprietary software pre-installed, most notably Google Mobile Services (GMS) which includes core apps such as Google Chrome, the digital distribution platform Google Play and associated Google Play Services development platform.

It is free and open-source software its source code is known as Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which is primarily licensed under the Apache License. It was unveiled in November 2007, with the first commercial Android device, the HTC Dream, being launched in September 2008. Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance and commercially sponsored by Google. GNU GPL v2 for the Linux kernel modifications Īndroid is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.Apache License 2.0 for userspace software.

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