IN THIS CHAPTER

In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, a revolutionary take on the traditional smartphone. This led to rumors of a “Google phone” to compete with the iPhone, especially in the realm of web-based applications and services.

But Google isn’t a hardware company, as Apple is, and had no interest in manufacturing or selling a phone itself. Google did, however, see tremendous profit potential in the mobile market, but from selling advertising tied to mobile services, not from selling phone hardware. This, then, was to be the “Google phone”—not a mobile phone but rather a mobile platform on which Google could port its many web-based services and break into the mobile advertising market.

This new mobile platform was dubbed Android—and is the basis for a new generation of smart web-based phones from a variety of global manufacturers.