The Future of Android

Android sits alongside a new wave of mobile operating systems designed for increasingly powerful mobile hardware. Windows Mobile and Apple’s iPhone now provide a richer, simplifi ed development environment for mobile applications. However, unlike Android, they’re built on proprietary operating systems that often prioritize native applications over those created by third parties and restrict communication among applications and native phone data. Android offers new possibilities for mobile applications

by offering an open development environment built on an open source Linux kernel. Hardware access is available to all applications through a series of API libraries, and application interaction, while carefully controlled, is fully supported. In Android, all applications have equal standing. Third-party and native Android applications are written using the same APIs and are executed on the same run time. Users can remove and replace any native application with a third-party developer alternative; even the dialer and home screens can be replaced.