Josh Valcarcel/WIRED[/cfereaption]
We're at Google's big developer conference today, Google IO 2014. We're expecting an Android-news heavy show, with lots of announcements about the future of the operating system, including Android in the home, the car, and all sort of other devices. There should also be some news about Chromecast, and we're expecting lots of looks at how developers can harness the cloud. It's going to be a big day, so stay tuned.
The show began with an enormous Rube Goldberg device that ran across both physical space and an enormous screen. It was the merger of physical and digital, and extremely complicated. But it gave way to a pleasant all-digital video of a ball bouncing through all sorts of apps, websites, photos and real world experiences. This is about Google everywhere.
Google's Sundar Pichai welcomed us all, and welcomed the crowd watching globally-including a viewing party in Nigera that's an all-female developer group. Pichai notes that Android has been growing massively, it now has more than 1 billion global users (which it now calls 30-day actives, indicating they've used the device in the past 30 days). These users take 1.5 trillion steps per day and pull their phones out of their pockets 100 billion times per day. Pichai claims that Android now has 62 percent of global market share of tablets. That's a lot of Android.
There is a new focus on androidone-an emphasis on bringing the next 5 billion people online. Androidone is a set of hardware reference platforms for high quality, low-cost smartphones. The software around it is the same software on stock Android (Nexus and Google Play editions) with locally relevant applications. One of the phones Pichai showed, a MicroMax, cost less than $100. The era of the cheap smartphone is upon us.
We'll be updating this page throughout the morning.
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