Σif today, 10 years ago, the most popular mobile operating system of our time, the AndroidOS Google, made its debut with the T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream), which had a sliding QWERTY keyboard and trackball with the Android 1.1 version that obviously had absolutely nothing to do with what we have been playing in our hands in recent years (think that it did not have a native video player and a virtual QWERTY keyboard).
The upgrade to Android 1.5 Cupcake brought the aforementioned and introduced to the public the Android Market, which was the app store, but also the ability for the user to configure several things according to their tastes, as a serious differentiation compared to the strict Apple's locked iOS.
The first serious steps, however, were taken when Verizon entered the game with Motorola DROID on November 5, 2009 and Android 2.0. Verizon and Motorola invested in the "DROID Does" advertising campaign in order to hit Apple on everything iOS did not do then, but it was still too early to cause "cracks". Things started to get even more serious with Android 2.2 Froyo, which supported Adobe Flash as opposed to iOS, regardless of whether it proved to be a brake on the speed and security of Android smartphones (after a few months the descent began until the removal of).
The success of DROID, however, pushed Google to release the Nexus One, the most powerful Android smartphone in terms of hardware and the first to receive immediate system upgrades on time from Google, and of course the smartphone that launched the program Nexus for devices with stock version of Android OS. This proved to be the strongest lure for the market that led to the release of other Nexus devices until 2015, when they gave way to Pixel smartphones. Also, unlike the cumbersome iPhone that then had a 3.5 ”screen, Android device makers began experimenting with larger screens, such as the Motorola DROID X with 4.3”.
By the third quarter of 2010, Android OS had already occupied 25.5% of the mobile operating system pie and climbed to second place, behind only Symbian, which used 36.6% of devices, while Apple's iOS held 16.7%. . Just a year earlier, the Android OS had only reached 3.5% of the devices on the market. The first came in the next quarter of 2010, when it reached almost 50% and the Samsung Galaxy S II and the Motorola Atrix 4G with a fingerprint sensor appeared.
In 2011, Google launched Android 3.1 Honeycomb for tablets and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for smartphones, with Motorola XOOM being the first to use Honeycomb with a dual screen. However, Google has decided to abandon experiments with both operating systems and move on to a single one for all Android devices. The following years were followed by KitKat, Lollipop, Marshmallow, Nougat, Oreo and finally Pie.
Today, Android OS holds 88% of the market and iOS 11.9%, according to Statista statistics for the second quarter of 2018.
