Android powers hundreds of millions of mobile devices globally and is the world's leading smartphone platform. It has an open marketplace that allows developers to create apps and games for Android's large user base. Android's openness and large number of manufacturers have led to strong growth in app usage, with over 1.5 billion apps downloaded monthly from Google Play. There are now over one million new Android device activations daily, and 400 million Android devices have been sold to date.

1. Android
and
Android
Phones

2. Android powers hundreds of millions
of mobile devices in more than 190
countries around the world. It's the
largest installed base of any mobile
platform and growing fast—every day
another million users power up their
Android devices for the first time and
start looking for apps, games, and
other digital content.

3. Android gives you a world-
class platform for creating
apps and games for Android
users everywhere, as well
as an open marketplace for
distributing to them instantly.

4. Android’s openness has
made it a favorite for
consumers and developers
alike, driving strong growth in
app consumption. Android
users download more than 1.5
billion apps and games from
Google Play each month.

5. Android devices are being
activated faster than ever.
Presumably, due to the sheer
number of manufacturers using
the OS, much faster than
Windows Phone devices are
being activated.

6. Google said there are now
more than one million
Android device activations a
day, or 12 devices every
second of every day. 400
million Android devices have
also been sold to date.

7. Android gives you everything you
need to build best-in-class app
experiences. It gives you a single
application model that lets you deploy
your apps broadly to hundreds of
millions of users across a wide range
of devices—from phones to tablets
and beyond.

8. Android also gives you tools for
creating apps that look great and take
advantage of the hardware capabilities
available on each device. It
automatically adapts your UI to look it's
best on each device, while giving you
as much control as you want over your
UI on different device types.

9. For example, you can create a single
app binary that's optimized for both
phone and tablet form factors. You
declare your UI in lightweight sets of
XML resources, one set for parts of the
UI that are common to all form factors
and other sets for optimizations
specific to phones or tablets. At
runtime, Android applies the correct
resource sets based on its screen
size, density, locale, and so on.

10. Android phones currently rank
first in terms of smartphone
operating systems and cover
more than half the
smartphones numbers
around the world.

11. An Android™ phone, sometimes called a
Droid™ phone, is a mobile telephone that
uses the Google-developed Android™
operating system. This operating system has
become a popular option in recent years for
so-called "smart phones," because
developers and manufacturers may freely
customize it to their specific needs.

12. Android™ phones are considered
revolutionary in some circles because of
the open source structure of the basic
firmware. All developers, whether
professional or hobbyists, are
encouraged to write programs and
applications for the operating
system, and contribute to the evolving
Android™ project by submitting them to
Google's Play Store™, a closed source
application for Android™ phones.

13. Multitasking
An Android™ phone can run multiple
applications at the same time in the
background, making multitasking easier. This
makes the functionality of the phone more fluid
than some competing platforms, although the
extent of this capability depends on the
hardware of the individual phone.

14. Non-Proprietary Approach
Some comparable devices using other operating
systems are governed by strict proprietary rules.
Developers interested in writing applications for the
iPhone™, for example, may not be permitted to
create programs that closely mirror applications
owned by Apple, such as iTunes™. All applications
must be approved by Apple before they are
permitted to appear in the Apple App Store™.

15. Historical Background
Initially, Google partnered with the High Tech
Computer Corporation (now HTC
Corporation) to build the first mobile phone to
run the Android™ platform, known as the
G1™ in the United States. In 2008, T-Mobile
premiered the G1™ Android™ phone to the
American public.

16. SDK
Android™ offers a Software Development Kit
(SDK) to help developers create functional
applications. While some parts of the
Android™ operating system are protected
under the Apache™ License to guard against
applications that could compromise the
phones' basic functionality, much of it is
released under the General Public
License, which invites developers to freely
make modifications.

17. Rooting
Despite the relatively open structure of the
operating system, manufacturers of many
devices that use Android™ do frequently
restrict user access to certain resources and
functions within the structure of the software.

18. Android became the world’s leading
smartphone platform at the end of
2010.[14] For the first quarter of
2012, Android had a 59%
smartphone market share
worldwide.

19. Android is without a
shadow of doubt now
the best selling mobile
Operating system
landing more market
shares than even the
iPhone.

20. The End
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