and...What is Android ?

What a good question to start with this blog .... because I called MuchoAndroid talk a lot about how much he gives us Android. So .... get to work, and try to answer what is Android.

According to Wikipedia, Android is a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. Was originally developed by Android Inc., a firm bought by Google in 2005. Android itself is an operating system (like Windows and Linux), but also is a software platform based on Linux kernel. It was designed this operating system, initially for mobile devices, and now the Android operating system to control other devices through libraries developed or adapted by Google using the Java programming language.

Initially, Android was developed by a company later acquired by Google Inc., but soon after joined the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 48 companies in hardware, software and telecommunications, which reached an agreement to promote open standards for mobile devices.

Google however has been who has published most of the Android source code under the Apache Software license, a license-free software and open source to any programmer.

You know that Google is taking over everything, and is a company with far-reaching. Well, Android was released in 2007, and now they are sponsoring this operating system but focus on the new smart phones, which are invading the mobile phone market "classic." Since beginning his career in the market, the Android OS to get much better, thanks to the spread and created several versions, which are:
Version 1.5 - Cupcake,
Version 1.6 - Donut,
version 2.0 / 2.1 Éclair,
Version 2.2 - Froyo,
Gingerbread version 2.3,
Version 3.x - Honeycomb.

If we focus on the names of the versions, we see that have names of desserts, a curious fact that jumps out of the technical terminology cuisine. In the appendix of the book lists these names and their meaning, by way of comment "of color." For smart phones (SmartPhones in English), Android 2.3 is the latest release at the time of writing this book, in February 2011 and we await the release of version 3.0 - Honeycomb, which is specially designed for tablets, taking advantage dimensional advantage of the tablets, because the screen is much larger than that of SmartPhones and this can make more and better visual interface designs.

If we look a little Android numbers, we must note that the unit sales of smart phones with Android are located in the first place in the United States in the second and third quarters of 2010, with a market share of 43.6 % in the third quarter.

Android currently has more than 25% share of the global market of smartphones, the second to Symbian OS "payment" not opensource, which was the result of the alliance of several mobile phone companies, among them include Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Siemens, Benq, Fujitsu, Lenovo, LG, Motorola.
Android has a large community of developers writing applications to extend the functionality of the devices, and we are looking for you as a reader to join this great community.
To date, there are about 100,000 applications available for Android. The programs are written in Java, which is why we strongly recommend to have basic knowledge of Java programming and understand the basic minimum and Object Oriented Programming. On my computer, "I can emulate Android? Si, se puede. It is very easy to emulate an Android phone in our operating system, we need only download the software development kit or SDK (English acronym software development kit) for Android. This is going to make briefly, when we install and configure our development environment.
Something very important is that there are versions for both Windows emulator for Mac OS and Linux. We will work on Windows, and in Appendix A to find how to configure the development environment for Linux.

So we can now emulate a cell phone with Android on PC, and it is easier than ever thanks to Android, a platform right now is a little unknown but not too long, and with the collaboration of all major technology companies to devices phones that are sure to work with Google, this will be a system comparable to Symbian, Palm OS and Windows Mobile that not too long I dare say that will surely be the minimum of a market dominated by Google's system. If we look back a couple of years, we can see where Google has entered what was right and their business grew.

Feel like you to join you too? c'mon! I'll go with you from here.