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Android, Inc. – A Brief 2011 Industry Analysis
Written by Christopher Frost, Patricia Brown, Amanda Cabrera Edited by: Cristina Miklas, Sarah Caldwell

Background Like a modern day Hewlett Packard, Android Inc. began as a true start-up firm. It was founded in late 2003 by Andy Rubin, a co-founder of Danger, with three former communications executives (Android, 2011). Rubin had scored a modest success the previous year with the TMobile Sidekick. As a follow up, Rubin wanted to develop a platform that could be used in mobile devices. The four members worked in secret until Google acquired the company in August 2005 (Android, 2011). This made Android a fully-owned subsidiary of Google and led to speculation that Google was planning to make its own phone. While Google was quietly buying up phone-related patents, Apple launched the iPhone with AT&T and made history. After a long wait, this prompted Google and 34 other companies to form the Open Handset Alliance (Android, 2011). The stated intention was to develop open standards for mobile devices; however, the real purpose was for all of the jilted bridesmaids to develop a challenger to Apple’s successful iPhone. It brought in hardware vendors like HTC and Samsung, along with telecom providers like T-Mobile and Sprint. Google’s contribution was the open-source Android platform which it provided to everyone free of charge. A year later, the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 hit the market.

STEEP Analysis
Technical Both Apple’s iOS and Android’s platform were developed from UNIX; however, Apple’s operating system is proprietary. Apple only licenses iOS for use with Apple hardware, like the iPhone or iPad, and it tightly controls anything that goes out with Apple’s logo. In contrast, Android has been freely distributed to vendors and is an open-source platform. Android provides the source code and SDK, or instructions, to developers so anyone can modify or change the operating system however they want. This