This 2 blog series gives more information about Android’s great journey which started secretly in October 2003, got public attention in 2007 and last year (2011) it became leader in mobile smart phone market with more than 45% market share.
I personally divide this journey into two parts, first being till Android Froyo release and other one is post-Froyo journey. Till Froyo world was looking towards Android as one another Smartphone OS. But Android’s post Froyo releases and devices started giving tough competition for other Smartphone market leaders and made world to rethink about Android.
October 2003Android Inc.
- Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California, United States in October, 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears and Chris White.
- Andy Rubin is co-founder and former CEO of Danger Inc and Android Inc. He is currently Sr. VP, Mobiles at Google.
- Rich Miner is co-founder of Wildfire Communications Inc. Currently he is investment partner at Google Ventures. Nick Sears was once VP at T-Mobile while Chris White headed design and interface development at WebTV.
August 17, 2005Acquisition by Google
- Google acquires Android Inc. with key talents like Andy, Rich and Chris.
- Team led by Andy develops mobile device platform powered by Linux kernel
November 5, 2007- OHA, a consortium of 34 mobile and technology companies was formed with the vision of developing open standards for mobile devices.
- On this same day OHA announces new open source mobile platform, android built on powerful Linux kernel 2.6
- OHA strength has now increased to 84 member companies
September 23, 2008- First Android release for developers
- Most Google services (Gmail, GTalk, Calendars, Maps, Search etc) are available as native apps
February 9, 2009
Android 1.1- Support for Google Maps with external library
- Tested for compatibility with T-Mobile G1 device
April 30, 2009
Android 1.5 (Cupcake)- Ability to record and watch videos through camcorder
- On screen soft keyboard with text-prediction
- Bluetooth with stereo mode (A2DP and AVRCP profiles) and auto-pairing
- Animated screen/window transitions
September 15, 2009
Android 1.6 (Donut)- Support for WVGA screen resolutions
- Speed improvement in camera application and search
- Support for multiple photo deletion in Gallery
- Support for new technologies like Text-to-speech engine and CDMA
October 26, 2009- Support for more screen sizes and resolutions
- With refreshed UI browser adds support for few HTML5 features like geo-location, local database and video tag
- Improved virtual keypad, Google Maps 3.1.2
- Camera with features like digital zoom, built-in flash, white balance etc.
- Bluetooth 2.1 with additional profiles like OPP and PBAP
- Minor update 2.0.1 was released on 3rd December, 2009
- Minor update 2.1 was released on 12th January, 2010 with support for animated wallpapers
May 20, 2010
Android 2.2 (Froyo)- Optimization in terms of OS speed, memory and performance
- Application speed improvement through JIT implementation
- USB tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot functionality
- Support for installing application on external card
- Android starts focusing Enterprise mobility by adding support for MS exchange features like security policies, auto-discovery, calendar synchronization, remote wipe etc.
Note: Android 1.0 and 1.1 versions are referred as Astro and Bender, but due to trademark issues these names are not used outside.
Second part of this blog can be read here.
Second part of this blog can be read here.
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