The unveiling of the Android distribution in 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 86 hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. For the furhter development of Android, Google initiated the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). It works as follows-
- At any given moment, there is a current latest release of the Android platform. This typically takes the form of a branch in the tree.
- Device builders and Contributors work with the current latest release, fixing bugs, launching new devices, experimenting with new features, and so on.
- In parallel, Google works internally on the next version of the Android platform and framework, working according to the product's needs and goals. We develop the next version of Android by working with a device partner on a flagship device whose specifications are chosen to push Android in the direction we believe it should go.
- When the "n+1"th version is ready, it will be published to the public source tree, and become the new latest release.
Android has a large community of developers writing applications("apps") that extend the functionality of the devices. Developers write primarily in a customized version of Java. Apps can be downloaded from third-party sites or through online stores such as Android Market, the app store run by Google. As of October 2011 there were more than 400,000 apps available for Android, and the estimated number of applications downloaded from the Android Market as of December 2011 exceeded 10 billion.
Many versions of Android have been released, the names of which are based on various desserts. Various versions in their order of release are as follows-
Cupcake (v1.5)
Donut (1.6)
Eclair (v2.0,v2.1)
Froyo (v2.2)
Gingerbread (v2.3.x)
Honeycomb (3.x.x)
Ice Cream Sandwich (v4.0.x)
Usage Share of Android