Android's First Five Months

Posted by Sung Hu Kim, Product Marketing Manager for Android, Google mobile team

As some of you may have heard, Wireless Week has chosen the Open Handset Alliance and Android for its Emerging Technology Award, noting that "Android's potential promises openness and innovation, perhaps changing not only the mobile Internet but the Internet itself."

We at Google would like to congratulate all the members of the Open Handset Alliance and the fantastic Android developer community for this well-deserved recognition. Android's growing momentum is the result of an amazing effort and collaboration among many different people.

Coincidentally, this week marks five months since the Open Handset Alliance and Android first went public. A lot has happened in this short period of time. Among the things of note:

• We released an early look at the Android software development kit (SDK), allowing anyone to learn and start creating apps for the platform.
• Feedback from developers has contributed to numerous fixes, improvements, new tools, and major updates to the SDK, the latest version of which you can find here.
• Google announced the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in total awards for the best Android apps -- and the first phase has nearly wrapped up. (Be sure to get your submissions in by April 14!)
• Several companies gave the first working demonstrations of Android in February.

These have been an exciting first five months, and we look forward to making the coming months even better.