Android was born for digital cameras, not for smartphones

Android was born for digital cameras, not for smartphones

Many people understand smartphones faster than Android. It is the most popular mobile operating system in the world.

Today, about 2.5 billion devices are running on the Android operating system. But you know, In fact, the platform was created for digital cameras, not for phones.

At an economic conference in Tokyo, Japan in 2013, Andy Rubin, co-founder of Android, revealed that Android was actually made for digital cameras. At the time, Android had planned to build a camera platform that would provide cloud storage for photos and videos.

The company plans to make it easier for people to access their photos from any device without having to rely on the camera's onboard storage. Co-founder Rubin also displayed the old slides at the conference. Which he prepared to show investors in 2004.

At that time, few people showed interest in his idea. Due to this, there was no agreement on his concept at that time. Five months after meeting with investors, Andy Rubin decided to change his strategy with his teammates.

They didn't see the camera market as big and saw new opportunities in the field of smartphones. After making the necessary changes in the concept of the operating system, the familiar Android was born among us.

At the time, they did not want to be charged for using the software. Because they understood that they are very sensitive about the market price.

Instead, they made Android a platform for selling free and other products and services such as apps and games. They had strategic growth and expansion at that time.

Thus, with the plan to provide software for free, the possibility of increasing deals with other phone manufacturers began to arise. But to make this plan a reality, it needed a partner with a large market.

Understanding that need, Google emerged. Google bought Android in July 2005 and selected Andy Rubin as its senior vice president. The company then aims to capture 9 percent of North America and Europe in five years.

But the goal has reached such an unprecedented pace that by 2010, Android had a 24 percent market share in North America. That was just the beginning. Today, 80 percent of the smartphones in use around the world are running on the Android operating system.

In fact, the decision of the Android team to focus on smartphones instead of digital cameras was the right one. If you look at the statistics alone, the sales of smartphones in 2007 had increased by 122 million and reached 1.5 billion. On the other hand, the sales of digital cameras have decreased by 100 million since 2007 and reached 15 million by 2019.

In 2010, the smartphone market was at its peak. At that time, 121 million mobile phones were sold worldwide. If Andy Rubin and his team had stuck to their old plan, no one would know what Android would be like today.

We can easily assume that it would not have been a great success. The Android we know today would not exist. Another possibility would be that Google would not be able to dominate the market in this way and that Microsoft would have captured the market through the Windows Mobile platform.

Platforms like Heck and Symbian would also evolve as open OS and Nokia would continue to be the king of smartphones. It's fun to think about these things, but in reality, they are all just guesses.

But what we can say is that today's smartphone market would be very different without Android. The story of Android shows how a small change in a decision can give a big break to a business.

According to Stephen R. Covey's best-selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, if you don't climb the stairs to the right wall, every step will go in the wrong direction.

But Rubin's ladder was right on the wall. Due to this, his decision gave birth to today's Android smartphone. Google initially bought Android for 50 million. Which is a very small amount compared to today's success of Android.