Android: How can an “impossible idea” become an operating system that dominates the world?

In 2004, Andy Rubin made an emergency call to his friend, Steve Perlman. At that time, Rubin’s startup, named Android, was in trouble. Rubin did not want to “ask for money” anymore, but the situation was too bad.

Android startups create mobile software for phones, have run out of money. And Perlman agreed to transfer some funds as soon as possible. “As soon as possible,” Rubin said nervously, Rubin still hasn’t paid Android’s rent for the office and the landlord is threatening to evict.

Perlman went to the bank and withdrew $ 10,000 for Rubin. The next day, Perlman again transferred a sum of money to finance Android. “I did it because I believed it and I wanted to help Andy,” Perlman said.

With the new cash, Rubin brought Android back on track. He attracted more investments and moved to a larger office in Palo Alto, California, a technology center in the West Bank.

In 2015, Android ran on about 85% of all smartphones worldwide, while iPhone accounted for only 11%. Android is entering the wristwatch, car and TV domains. It is not difficult to imagine one day Android will be present in every device from the kitchen and to the toothbrush.

To capture 85% of the smartphone market, Rubin had to defeat the two most valuable and profitable technology companies of their time: Microsoft and Apple. Rubin did not do it alone. He received help from investors like Perlman and great support from Google.

From an “impossible” idea

During his 29-year career in Silicon Valley, Andy Rubin has been known as a technical genius, an ingenious entrepreneur and an active leader.

Above all, Rubin is an entrepreneur who likes to create everything, whether it’s coding or building robots.

And one of Rubin’s crazy things is building an open operating system for phones in the early 2000s. It’s crazy because in the early 2000s, operators controlled everything, from the way phones were. sold in the market until its price. Operators are determined to keep this business model, they don’t want any company – big or small – to violate their profits, which is why most industries think an idea like Rubin is impossible!

Android is an open source system. The term “open source” means that anyone can get the native code that makes up Android and use it for free on their utilities. Anyone can build on that code or modify it.

Rubin initially tried to design Android for the camera but could not get the attraction from investors.

When the Android team offered their ideas to venture capitalists, their initial business plan was to give free software to phone makers. Operators will then order phones with manufacturers, run Android open software, and they can brand or modify it when they see fit. Android will then sell “value-added services” to operators.

It is a business model designed to attract network operators. However, the problem is very difficult to succeed because the carriers do not want to give up control of the industry. For example, Rubin’s first phone, the T-Mobile Sidekick, was only successful because T-Mobile agreed to sell it and rebrand it. Most of Sidekick owners don’t know Rubin’s company. They only know that they only receive the phone via T-Mobile. That’s T-Mobile’s product!

Rubin’s plan will allow public operators to advertise their products and services, but will also ask them to share some things in the mobile market with Android. And they are not willing to agree with such an idea.

The “impossible” nature can make any CEO feel confused – but not with Rubin.

“Even when things get worse, you never really give up,” is Rubin’s reaction to the difficult situation at the time.

Most people thought Rubin was “crazy” for trying to continue, Perlman, who met Rubin when they both worked for Apple in the early 1990s, recalled meeting a venture capitalist at Whole Food. in 2003 and asked what he thought about Rubin’s open source project.

“He said: ‘Steve, come on. He (Rubin) will be far from breaking even,” Perlman recalls. “He is doing an impossible thing.”

By 2014, analysts estimate that 1 billion Android phones have been shipped!

Who is Andy Rubin, the man behind Android,?

Andy Android portrait painting

Rubin graduated from Utica University in upstate New York. Before Android, he had a long career in technology, starting at Carl Zeiss Microscopy, where he worked as an engineer for about a year from 1986 to 1987.

According to the New York Times After leaving his job at Carl Zeiss, Rubin moved to Switzerland to work for a robot manufacturing company. During his vacation in the Cayman Islands in 1989, Rubin met an Apple engineer named Bill Caswell.

Rubin barely knew Caswell, but helped Caswell – Rubin introduced Caswell to a place after Caswell was expelled from the seaside house after a fight with his girlfriend.

And it was that carefree help that helped Rubin get his job at Apple, where he worked as a software engineer from 1989 to 1992 after Caswell invited him for a job. According to The Verge, Rubin’s robot love also appears at Apple – he even nicknamed Android when working at the company, according to The Verge.

But that time also happened a lot. Rubin was in trouble when programming Apple’s internal phone system at the discretion of Apple CEO John Sculley.

Rubin and Perlman, now CEO of a company called Artemis Networks, are working on traditional wireless networks, eventually leaving Apple to work for General Magic – a company that separates Apple from the top. the 1990s. The company has been credited with creating a personal handheld computer that some people call the precursor to modern smartphones.

Rubin worked at General Magic from 1995 to 1997, until he left and joined WebTV, eventually bought by Microsoft and became MSN TV. Perlman founded WebTV and also accompanied Rubin with Microsoft. After leaving Microsoft in 1999, Rubin founded his own company, Danger, the startup that invented the T-Mobile Sidekick.

At that time, Rubin probably didn’t know, but it was his first major turning point and eventually it led to his next startup being bought by Google. It is also the source of today’s open source Android operating system.

While many people find Rubin’s idea for Android crazy, Rubin found a supporter: Larry Page.

In 2005, Google officially bought Android for $ 50 million. Many people have likened to the acquisition of Google’s Android operating system as a “daytime robbery”, when comparing the value of $ 50 million with the value of the deal Google acquired YouTube for $ 1.65 billion.

By 2007, Google publicly introduced the Android operating system, an open source operating system. This decision really revolutionized the mobile phone industry. According to the latest data, as of July 2019, Android accounted for 76.08% of the global mobile operating system market share, iOS accounted for 22.01%, the rest are other small operating systems.