Fifteen months after that, Google (GOOGL, Tech30) crashed the birthday party.
Google’s first Android smartphone become unveiled on September 23, 2008, in partnership with T-Mobile (TMUS). The cell phone, called the G1, seems like an oddity now. It had a bulky body, slide-out keyboard, and a BlackBerry-style trackball further to touch display.
Yet, this device officially kicked off the fiercest tech rivalry of the century. By early 2011, Android’s working device had come to be the maximum popular telephone platform inside the U.S. — and Apple (AAPL, Tech30) CEO Steve Jobs had declared “thermonuclear conflict” in opposition to Android.
Apple created the present day smartphone as we realize it, however, Android went on to dominate the marketplace thru several partnerships with vendors and decrease expenses. In the primary area of this yr, a remarkable 86% of smartphones bought international ran on Android, consistent with records from Gartner.
Android’s dominance is all of the greater hanging thinking about the crew turned into stuck off defend by means of the iPhone launch.
“Google and Apple have been running on developing the telephone very a whole lot at the same time,” says Fred Vogelstein, author of Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution.
Google had obtained Android, then a small startup, in 2005 to benefit a stronger footing on cell gadgets. In 2006, Google’s Android team labored on designing its own software and a cell phone that seemed like a BlackBerry.
Then Jobs unveiled a greatly one of a kind tool on the degree in January 2007. The head of Android, Andy Rubin, turned into in a car whilst the presentation kicked off. He asked the driver to tug over to watch it online, in line with Dogfight.
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“Holy crap,” Rubin stated within the automobile, in keeping with the e-book. “I wager we’re now not going to ship that telephone.”
The team needed to move returned to the drawing board. “The Android guys certainly did scrap it… And redesigned the primary Android device,” Vogelstein tells CNN Tech.
Android phone world domination
The Android smartphone launched in 2008 did have a larger touch display screen just like the iPhone, however, the device turned into less of a chance to Apple than the method in the back of it.
Unlike Apple, Google made Android an open platform. That meant manufacturers ought to use and adapt Android’s operating system for their gadgets. By 2010, the cellphone market changed into flooded with compelling Android phones from Motorola, Samsung, and HTC with a number of rate factors.
Only a couple Android devices have been definitely produced by means of Google. Those included the Nexus smartphone line and the extra recent Pixel cellphone.
“It has a military of carriers in the back of it growing exclusive types of Android-based merchandise,” says Tuong Nguyen, an analyst with Gartner. “You have lots of unique people attempting different things to make it interesting and differentiated.”
For Jobs, that sounded like heresy. The CEO believed in cautiously controlling the consumer revel in. But the revel in of using an Android may want to range wildly from one tool to the subsequent.
“Android may be very fragmented,” Jobs stated on an income call in 2010. “The users will figure all of it out.”
Behind the scenes, but, Jobs may also have felt threatened. Microsoft formerly overtook Apple by making its softwar
