It Was Hatched On A Beach.

26.7.11 The Reporter 0 Comments

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It started out as a dream hatched on a beach in the Cayman Islands.

Danger, Inc. had agreed with CEO Andrew E. Rubin that the company needed a new direction, and thus, a new leader. So what do you do when the company you helped build from the ground up fires you? You go clear your head in the Cayman Islands. It was there, on its beach, that the idea for an open-source operating system for mobile phones, came upon him.

Upon his return to Silicon Valley, Andy Rubin was on the lookout for investors who would be willing to provide venture capital for the new idea and the new company he was about to start. As he pitched it through his different prospects, he struck the mother lode when Google cofounder Larry Page not only loved the idea, he also bought Andy Rubin's new company.

What started out as a dream on a beach now translated into a 200-megabyte software made up of 11 million lines of code that now has a consumer base of at least 59% of the smartphone market share, with 550,000 new devices being activated every day, as of June 2011. More people are making their first smartphone an Android phone, and with the Android OS' seamless integration with all things Google, it's not hard to understand why.

One major draw of the Android is that its main kernel is based on Linux. Linux was the first user-friendly open-source operating system, and it has been known for its security and resistance to malware. Thus, unlike the Nokia Symbian platform, it will not be as vulnerable to mobile device malware. For those who have had horror stories of mistakenly downloading malware through bluetooth and seeing their smartphones be bricked thanks to that, this feature comes as a relief.

The second major draw is that the Android is not an operating system created for mobile phones; rather, it is an operating system created to power mobile phones and make them into handheld computers capable of surfing the Internet. Thus, the Android is all about multi-tasking and keeping a user connected to his online life.

And the third, and probably most important draw for the Android is its seamless integration with all things Google. More and more users have jumped on to Google because of its security and the applications and services it offers. With almost everything from bookmark managers to readers and even word processors and spreadsheets available as online apps from Google, there's no wonder why people are going on Google more and more.

From the OEMs' perspective, the major draw of the Android is that it is Open Source: free, and free for them to customize. This allows them to create devices without the need to develop their own platforms from the ground up, and therefore sell their devices at prices that consumers won't be able to resist.

The Android revolutionized how the Internet is accessed by the road warrior. More than that, they made the smartphone available to the Average Joe -- or Juan. An experience similar to the iPhone's iOS, at half, or even a third of the iPhone's price tag. With such pluses that are advantageous to everyone from the OEM to the consumer alike, you'd wonder why Andy Rubin didn't dream of this sooner.




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