T E C H N O L O G Y
2
ILLUSTRATION BY 731, PHOTO: NASA (1)18
Edited by
Jeff MuskusSteve Jobs was furious. “I will spend my last dying
breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of
Apple’s,” he told his biographer Walter Isaacson,
“to right this wrong.” The wrong? A mobile operat-
ing system by the name of Android, the free Google
software that manufacturers were using to make all
kinds of look-alike iPhones capable of acting like
iPhones. Under Jobs, Apple Inc. tried to sue what it
called iPhone ripoffs straight out of existence. The
chief executive was pretty straightforward about
that aim. Included in that same rant from 2010 is
the line “I’m going to destroy Android.”
Thank goodness Jobs failed, in the courtroom
and the marketplace. Without Android, smart-
phones might have stayed as they were when he
was alive: a remarkable technology confined mostly
to the relatively affluent parts of the globe, as the PC
was before it. Instead, the smartphone represents
a new branch of technological evolution, the driv-
ing force that’s bringing the rest of the world online.
Only a decade has passed since the first major
Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy, hit store
shelves, and just about half the global population
had a smartphone or something similar by the time
Samsung Electronics Co. unveiled its latest flagship● Google, Samsung, and China
made the mobile OS ubiquitous.
But the future looks differentmodel, the Galaxy Note 10, on Aug. 7. Few other
consumer gadgets have gotten to that threshold so
fast. Although Apple sparked the modern smart-
phone revolution, Android was the essential ingre-
dient that made the devices ubiquitous.
Maybe this all would have happened even if
Android never existed. More likely, it would have
taken longer for smartphones and the internet
in general to reach this tipping point, and online
adoption might have stopped at a much lower level.
Consider that when Jobs unleashed his Android
rant, the iPhone represented about 15% of the
175 million smartphones sold worldwide in the
prior year. Fast-forward to 2018, and Apple still had
about 15% of the market, but total smartphone sales
had mushroomed to 1.4 billion. Versions of Android
powered more than 8 in 10 of those new devices.
Three principal forces pulled off this coup.
There was Google, with its software and services;
Samsung, a South Korean electronics giant wak-
ing from its slumber; and China, where a stun-
ning economic rise created a massive audience
for life-changing gadgets. Together, this unwitting
coalition created an unprecedented technological
transformation. Essential to Android’s success: It
was, as it still is, a hot mess.
Each of the big three players in Android’s ascen-
dancy is starting to seriously reckon with the down-
sides of the way things were set up. Android won,
but as companies race to figure out the future
beyond smartphones, Jobs is getting his revenge.
From today’s vantage point, it’s easy to view
the ubiquity of the smartphone as preordained,
but only an extremely optimistic tech seer would
have predicted it when Google bought a startup
called Android in 2005. After the iPhone landed
like a bomb in 2007, Google scrambled to make itsHow Android Took
Over the World