Android at 10
In an effort to ensure that another company wouldn’t gain dominant control over the mobile market, Google and Android have wildly, unequivocally succeeded in doing just that.
Android has taken the place in smartphones that Windows once held with desktops: dominant market share. Worldwide, IDC pegs Android’s share at about 85 percent. We can argue about regions and whether enough of those customers are willing to spend money on apps and many other things, but that number is almost too big for nuance.
Android is the dominant computing platform on the planet. Not only has Android prevented some version of Windows from taking over mobile, but it has actually eclipsed Windows as the most popular operating system, period.
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There's a running joke that "the year of Linux on the desktop" is always just around the corner, but destined to never actually arrive. However, we can reinterpret "desktop" to not specifically mean literal "desktop PCs", but more generally "mass market computing devices", which these days is mostly smartphones and tablets. And considering that Android is based on Linux, it seems that "Linux on the desktop" has already arrived.
I've said the same for years. Everyone tracks a certain other company but what Google has down with Android is frankly amazing. I even like non Google Android devices. It's a decent base to build interesting devices and deserves its place as most popular computing platform.
