Android is a Mobile Operating System (M-OS) initially developed by Android Inc., a company purchased in 2005 by Google. This mobile operating system is based on the modified version of Linux Kernel. In the 2nd Quarter of 2010, the smartphones running under the Android operating system were ranked first among the smartphone OS. One of the advantages of Android OS is that it has a large community of developers writing an application program that broadens the functionality of Android OS’s devices. It is estimated that there are already more or less 70,000 available applications for Android, which makes it the 2nd most popular mobile development environment.
According to Gartner, in the 2nd quarter of 2010, the market share of smartphones running Android OS per unit of Androiwasrd in rank). In May 2010, the first quarter of US sales surpassed that of the rival iPhone platform. According to a report by the NPD group, Android achieved 28% of smartphone sales in the US market, up 8% from the December 2009 quarter. As of August 4, 2010, Google is activating 200,000 new phones to the Android platform daily. The Android mobile operating system versions are the following: Android 1.5 (Cupcake), 1.6 (Donut), 2.1 (Eclair), and 2.2 (Froyo).
