Millions of people rely on Android-powered smartphones everyday, but that simple device almost never was, according to Andy Rubin, creator and former head of the company.
“The exact same platform, the exact same operating system we built for cameras, that became Android for cellphones,” Rubin said at an economic summit in Tokyo, according to PC World.
The original plan was to "create a camera platform with a cloud portion for storing photos online," wrote the site. Rubin then unveiled slides from an original pitch to investors in April 2004, displaying a camera connected to a home computer and "Android Datacenter."
The problem was cameras weren't a "big enough" market, said Rubin, and there was stiff competition from Microsoft and Symbian. "I wasn't worried about iPhone yet," he added. However, the issues didn't stop there, as Rubin also noticed that while hardware costs were falling, software vendors were charging top dollar for their products, making it harder for Android to afloat in a saturated market.
Eventually, they decided to shoot for growth rather than revnue and give their product away for free. Once they did that, they hit their "ambitious" 9% growth rate goal and then some. Last year, the company's growth rate stood at 72%, said PC World.
[ht Boy Genius Report]
