The Importance of Android

The Android operating was invented in 2003 as a camera operating system. It was purchased by Google shortly after and the operating system was modified slightly for use on touchscreen smartphones.

The Apple iPhone was released in 2007 and quickly dominated the touchscreen smartphone market previously dominated by Microsoft's Palm devices. The Apple iPad was then released, also dominated the tablet market, quickly outselling Microsoft's Tablet PCs.

Android started slowly but its growth was explosive. Today Android is used on 70% of all smartphones. It is a free and open source operating system used by numerous manufacturers.

One of the benefits of Android is that the manufacturers who use it are faced with greater competitive pressure, leading to greater value for money for the consumer. If you owned an iPhone 4S and wanted to upgrade to get a faster phone, so you search online and realise that the fastest phone on the market today is the Samsung Galaxy S4. You want to buy it but realise that if you do, you will not be able to transfer your music on iTunes, your apps on the Apple App Store, and so forth to the Galaxy S4 because it uses a Android. So you reluctantly buy an iPhone 5, a phone that is more expensive than the Galaxy S4 but two times slower. This problem exists because you are trapped in the Apple ecosystem. But what if you were in the Android ecosystem and used, say, a Samsung Galaxy S3? Then your upgrade choices are infinite. You buy a phone from HTC, Sony, Motorola, LG, Huawei, Asus, HP, Oppo, and many more. You can buy a phone to suit your preferences and tastes, and if any company wants to rip you off, simply move to another one. You cannot do that with Apple. You are stuck with one company that has no incentive to offer you a better product for a lower price.

Although it is difficult to move from Apple to Android, it all depends on how invested you are in the system. If Apple takes advantage of its customers too much, they may get so angry they will be willing to switch to Android regardless of the costs, so the existence of Android does put pressure on Apple as well as Android partners.