Statistics and facts about Android
Android is a mobile operating system (OS) developed by Google. Initially, Android was created by Android Inc., a California-based company that worked with operating systems for digital cameras and mobiles. With the goal of entering the mobile market, Google acquired the company in 2005 and released the mobile operating system Android to the consumer market two years after.
As the Android OS was introduced to the market, it gained the support of several smartphone manufacturers, such as Sony, Samsung and HTC, which have all built phones designed specifically for the Android system. This has aided Android significantly in gaining market share, taking over the top position of smartphone operating systems from Symbian OS by 2010. Since then, Android has consistently distanced itself from the competitors, aggressively increasing its market share over the years. In the beginning of 2016, Android accounted for around 85 percent of allsmartphone sales to end users worldwide. Nearly four billion Android smartphones have been sold to end users worldwide since 2009. Android is forecast to maintain its leadership in the market, projected to account for about 85 percent of all smartphones shipments worldwide in 2020. KitKat, Lollipop and Jelly Bean are some of the most popular Android versions.
Upon the success of the operating system in the smartphone market, Android expanded its operating system to tablets. Android tablets were introduced to compete with Apple’s iPad, a pioneer product in this particular market. Due to the lack of quality applications for Android tablets, Android did not grow as strongly at first as in the smartphone market, but managed to establish itself as the leading tablet operating system in late 2012. Android is forest to maintain its strong market position as the operating system is projected to account for 56.5 percent of the global tablet operating system market share by 2019.
The increasing popularity of Android devices has a direct impact on the app store Google Play, which was first introduced under the name of Android Market. It is now the biggest app store in the world, and has two million apps available for download. Despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of all apps offered on Google Play Store are free of charge, Google Play Store generated about six billion U.S. dollars in revenues in 2015, and is expected to increase this figure to around 14 billion U.S. dollars by 2019.
