How Nokia, Microsoft, Apple and Others Reacted to Android 10 Years Ago

While the earth is acknowledging and jubilant the 10th ceremony of iPhone, not many of united states of america fifty-fifty know that 2017 is likewise the 10th anniversary of Android. The first public beta of Android was released to the public back in 2007. Although a working Android phone did not see the light of the day until one more than year (first consumer Android phone was launched in 2008), the release of the public beta set the foundation stone for the platform which today powers more than fourscore% of all the smartphones in the earth. What's fifty-fifty funnier is that just like the 10th ceremony of Android is not receiving much printing, when Android'southward first beta was launched, information technology was hugely underestimated and ridiculed by every major smartphone company of that time including Microsoft, Nokia, Apple tree, and others. Allow's encounter what they said:

Nokia: "Nosotros don't run across this as a threat."

Microsoft: "It really sounds that they are getting a whole bunch of people together to build a phone and that's something we've been doing for v years. I don't sympathize the impact that they are going to have." (Scott Horn, Microsoft Windows Mobile team).

Symbian: "If Google was not involved the industry would have only yawned and rolled over. Nosotros take it seriously but we are the ones with real phones, real phone platforms and a wealth of volume built upwardly over years." (Symbian's John Forsight.)

Apple: "I volition spend my terminal dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $forty billion in the bank, to right this incorrect. I'1000 going to destroy Android because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."(Steve Jobs)

As you tin see, none of the companies took Android as a serious competition. Apple tree's co-founder Steve Jobs even went as far as to call Android a stolen product and vowed to destroy information technology. However, we know what happened 10 years in the time to come, don't nosotros? Every bit mentioned earlier, today, more than than eighty% of smartphones are running on Android and at the same time Microsoft's mobile division is officially dead and Nokia died and so was reborn with Android as its soul (and so to speak). Simply Apple has managed to stand up-up to the Android juggernaut till at present. If only the major smartphone companies knew and so what nosotros know at present, they would not have taken Android so slightly.