Google’s Andy Rubin revealed yesterday that the company expects at least 18 Android phones to be on the market by the end of the year – and those are just the ones it knows about.
Google’s senior diretcor of Mobile Platforms, Andy Rubin, spoke at the Google I/O conference yesterday and gave the assembled coders a run-down of Android’s history to date and where Google sees the OS going.
In just seven months, Android has found its way on to three handsets from two manufacturers and is available in 12 countries on 10 different carriers.Around 5000 apps are available on the Marketplace and each user downloads an average of 40 apps. Android is now the number 2 mobile web browsing platform in the US (the iPhone is #1, obviously).
Not bad at all – but just the begining, according to Rubin. By the end of 2009, Google expects there to be over 18 Android handsets on the market – and that includes only the ones it knows about or is closely involved in.
Google operates a three-tier licensing system for Android – developers can have the full ‘Google Experience’ with Google branding – like the HTC Magic, for example – or just offer Google applications and services under their own branded handset. Both of these routes rquire Google to be notified and fees to be paid. Companies are also free to just take the Android code and slap it on any device they like without notifying Google, provided they don’t then try to leverage the Goole app suite or refer to the big-G at all.
Potentially then there could be many more Android phones in the works. iPhone beware – the Android platform is about to get a lot more attractive to software companies.
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