Google said on Wednesday its Android operating system now powers two billion active devices around the world.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Google I/O, an annual conference for computer programmers, that as well as there being two billion active devices running Android, there are 800 million active users of Google Drive and 500 million active users of Google Photos. Google Assistant is now on 100 million devices.
Dave Burke, Google's vice president of engineering, told the conference in Mountain View, northern California, that Android has "the largest reach of any computing platform of its kind."
Based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices, Android was first unveiled in 2007. It is now the operating system -- the software platform that manages hardware and software resources, including applications -- for more than 80 percent of the world's smartphones.
Dave Burke speaks during the conference on Wednesday, May 17, 2017. Google's AI-based voice Assistant is on more than 100 million devices now, and the company is leveraging a longtime competitor to expand the technology to even more people. /VCG Photo
With its latest version released in August 2016, Android is said by Google officials to be "across all screens": watches, cars, television sets, Internet of Things (IoTs) and Chromebooks, a class of low-cost laptop computers comprising nearly 60 percent of laptops sold to K-12 schools in the United States.
Promising to make Android "even more useful," Burke announced a beta release of the operation system's newest version, Android O. Its formal release is scheduled for "later this year."
Also at the Wednesday event, Google said its voice-powered digital assistant, known as Google Assistant, is available on Apple's iPhone starting immediately.
(Source: Xinhua)
9562km
the company's annual developer conference
