Android seems to be on its way to infiltrating into every smartphone on planet as it turns five. It seems like just yesterday when the nascent Open Handset Alliance introduced the Linux-based mobile platform that has now become the world’s biggest mobile operating system by far. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has stated that 1.3 million Android devices are activated on a daily basis. At the rate it is growing, in about five or ten more years one of every ten people living on planet earth will own an Android device.
Of course, as the installed base increases, rate of growth will probably slow down a bit. Though Android’s market share is still increasing, the percentage growth is slowing down as the total number of devices increases. Windows Phone 8 is also billed as a competitive platform according to analysts, and may snatch some share from upcoming Android devices once it gains some momentum.
Not only will Android reach a billion activations on its sixth birthday next year, there are already about six hundred unique Android devices accounted for and identified till now with dozens of hotly anticipated devices lined up over the next one year. When the partnership came into effect, Eric Schmidt expressed his views on the powerful software giving way to thousands of new phone models and today his vision has come true as Android floods the markets. Starting mainly with Android 1.5 (the first version to become popular), more popularly known as Cupcake, OS 2.1 Eclair, Android 2.2 Froyo or even Android 2.3 Gingerbread, on which most devices are running currently, Android revolutionised the market with its great utility and plethora of applications. With Jelly Bean, Android has transitioned into a slick, smooth and powerful OS with some great functionality.
What adds to Android’s dominance is that some of the leading phones in the market today run on this great software, be it the Samsung Galaxy S, S II, S III, or the Droid series. Samsung has also emerged as the only main competitor to the behemoth giant Apple on the back of its wildly popular Galaxy series (whose Galaxy S III recently hit the 30 million devices sold mark). Another interesting bit of trivia that that make the existence of what we can even call ‘a species’ of Android phones much more useful is the fact that there are more than 700,000 mind boggling applications available in the App market, rivalled only by Apple’s iOS.
