It all starts when Google looks at Android back in July 2005 and buys the company for 50 million$. That's nothing, considering that in 2016 it had already generated 22 billion$ in revenue. 

Ten years of unstoppable growth(2009-2018)

The statistics begin to count from the first quarter of 2009. At that time, Symbian, Nokia's operating system, was the owner and mistress of the market. However, Android only needed a year and a half to overtake iOS and half a year to unseat Symbian. By 2011, Android became the most used mobile operating system in the world, being the Samsung Galaxy SII its main spearhead (it managed to sell 3 million units in 55 days, 1.5 per second).

Samsung, in this sense, has played an important role in the dissemination and popularization of Android. In fact, if we look at the best-selling mobiles during the first years of the life of this operating system, we will discover that Samsung has always been very present:

• 2010: the second best-selling mobile, after the first iPhone, was the Samsung Galaxy S (20 million units).

• 2011: the best-selling mobile was the Samsung Galaxy SII (40 million units)

• 2012: Samsung Galaxy SIII repeats gold with 70 million units sold.

• 2013: the Samsung Galaxy S4 sold 40 million units that year.

Since its inception, Android has been the only operating system that has grown in terms of market share. Symbian, RIM, and other minority systems have disappeared from the face of the Earth or, at least, their presence is so insignificant that it is not even considered in the statistics. iOS, for its part, has remained stable, although its trend is decreasing. Although every year it has remained with a 20% share since 2014 it has suffered a significant decline.

And why does Android have such a large market share? Easy, because 1,300 manufacturers around the globe use Android on their smartphones. In fact, there are currently more than 24,000 models of all ranges, colors, and prices that add up, according to Google, more than 2,000 million active terminals.

1,300 manufacturers, 24,000 models, more than 2 billion devices worldwide. Why is Android a leader?

Apple is the only one that can launch devices with iOS, so the rest must either use Android (which is free) or develop their own operating system, something expensive and that does not seem too viable in the short and medium-term.

The growth is also reflected in sales and applications(2010-2018)

This growth has been accompanied by an exponential increase in the number of applications available on Google Play. Over time, the Android app store has become a global platform for developers to share their creations. In fact, there are more than three million Android apps available right now.

Growth of app store and google play(2009-2018)

However, Google Play is not as profitable as the App Store. Despite the fact that 70% of app downloads are made from Google Play, of the 33.4 billion dollars that the mobile app market has generated so far in 2018, Apple has remained with 22.6, while Google "only" with 11.8 billion.

A long future ahead

Android, as the headline of this article says, has literally eaten the market. It could be said with a margin of error of just 1% that it has a 90% market share. Nine out of ten mobiles that can be found in the world carry Android. Its trend, as can be seen in the first graph, has been increasing throughout history, and everything indicates that it will continue to do so.

Emerging markets like India will play a key role in raising this market share, and Google knows it. That explains the launch of Android One and Android Go, two sister versions of Android focused on terminals with less powerful specifications. Android has a market share of 92% in India, but we are talking about a country that has 1,324 million inhabitants of which only 300 million have a smartphone.

The future of Android is promising, and nothing seems to indicate that it will get worse with nine out of ten phones using it

The future is promising, and nothing seems to indicate that Android is going to plummet. However, there has been talked of Andromeda for a long time, a new Google project that seeks to combine the mobile, tablet, and desktop experience under a single operating system. Something like this is what Android needs to join the convergence and enter fully into the world of desktop software (especially considering that Chrome OS does not finish taking off).

Is this the future of Android? Will the day ever come when Andy gets off his smartphone and onto computers? Only time will tell. At the moment, we are toasting the 10 years of Android's life and for all those that lie ahead.