Android is a mobile operating system initially developed by Android Inc. Android was bought by Google in 2005. Android is based upon a modified version of the Linux kernel. Google and other members of the Open Handset Alliance collaborated on Android’s development and release. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is tasked with the maintenance and further development of Android.

In Q4 2010 the Android O.S. was the world’s best-selling smartphone platform, dethroning Nokia’s Symbian from the 10 year top position, according to Canalys

Android has a large community of developers writing application programs (“apps”) that extend the functionality of the devices. There are currently over 200,000 apps available for Android.Android Market is the online app store run by Google, though apps can be downloaded from third-party sites (AT&T permits third-party apps only on their Aria phone ). Developers write primarily in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries. Python, Ruby and other languages are also available for Android development via the Android Scripting Environment

The Android operating system software stack consists of Java applications running on a Java-based, object-oriented application framework on top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation. Libraries written in C include the surface manager, OpenCore[17] media framework, SQLite relational database management system, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics API, WebKit layout engine, SGL graphics engine, SSL, and Bionic libc. The Android operating system consists of 12 million lines of code including 3 million lines of XML, 2.8 million lines of C, 2.1 million lines of Java, and 1.75 million lines of C++.