Unfolding Stakeholder Thinking: Theory, Responsibility and Engagement

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In August 2015, Google announced that devices in the Google Nexus series would begin to receive monthly security patches. Google has publicly expressed its frustration for the current patent landscape in the United States, accusing Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of trying to take down Android through patent litigation, rather than innovating and competing with better products and services. Jelly Bean" contained relatively fewer user-facing changes, focusing more on minor changes and platform improvements. Lifehacker reported in 2011 that third-party task-killer applications were doing more harm than good. billion end users in 2014, Android shipped over four times more than iOS and OS X combined, and over three times more than Microsoft Windows.

In January 2014, further reports revealed the intelligence agencies' capabilities to intercept the personal information transmitted across the Internet by social networks and other popular applications such as Angry Birds, which collect personal information of their users for advertising and other commercial reasons. Alibaba Group defended the allegations, arguing that the OS was a distinct platform from Android (primarily using HTML5 apps), but incorporated portions of Android's platform to allow backwards compatibility with third-party Android software. They also wrote that "About half of devices in use at the end of 2016 had not received a platform security update in the previous year", stating that their work would continue to focus on streamlining the security updates program for easier deployment by manufacturers.Third-party application development is not supported in" the current version, and software running on the OS and processor for it, run the " DRM framework for protected content. In 2020, Google launched the Android Partner Vulnerability Initiative to improve the security of Android. Both Apple and Microsoft have sued several manufacturers for patent infringement, with Apple's ongoing legal action against Samsung being a particularly high-profile case.

Google has developed several variations of Android for specific use cases, including Android Wear, later renamed Wear OS, for wearable devices such as wrist watches, [459] [460] Android TV for televisions, [461] [462] Android Things for smart or Internet of things devices and Android Automotive for cars.Microsoft has also tied its own Android software to patent licenses, requiring the bundling of Microsoft Office Mobile and Skype applications on Android devices to subsidize the licensing fees, while at the same time helping to promote its software lines. Plans to relaunch Android One surfaced in August 2015, [58] with Africa announced as the next location for the program a week later. Parrot unveiled an Android-based car stereo system known as Asteroid in 2011, [497] followed by a successor, the touchscreen-based Asteroid Smart, in 2012. When an application is not in use the system suspends its operation so that, while available for immediate use rather than closed, it does not use battery power or CPU resources.

All Trusty applications are single-threaded; multithreading in Trusty userspace currently is unsupported.The NSA and GCHQ insist their activities comply with all relevant domestic and international laws, although the Guardian stated "the latest disclosures could also add to mounting public concern about how the technology sector collects and uses information, especially for those outside the US, who enjoy fewer privacy protections than Americans. Leaked documents codenamed Vault 7 and dated from 2013 to 2016, detail the capabilities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare, including the ability to compromise the operating systems of most smartphones (including Android). Google later admitted in a court filing that this was part of an effort to address the disputes with Oracle, as its use of OpenJDK code is governed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) with a linking exception, and that "any damages claim associated with the new versions expressly licensed by Oracle under OpenJDK would require a separate analysis of damages from earlier releases". Additionally, by providing infrastructure that combines dedicated hardware and dedicated applications running on regular Android, Google have opened up the platform for its use in particular usage scenarios, such as the Android Auto app for cars, [465] [466] and Daydream, a Virtual Reality platform.

Some commentators have noted that the industry has a financial incentive not to upgrade their devices, as the lack of updates for existing devices fuels the purchase of newer ones, [178] an attitude described as "insulting". Android's variant of the Linux kernel has further architectural changes that are implemented by Google outside the typical Linux kernel development cycle, such as the inclusion of components like device trees, ashmem, ION, and different out of memory (OOM) handling. According to International Data Corporation, shipments of Android-powered tablets surpassed iPads in Q3 2012.Google publishes most of the code (including network and telephony stacks) under the non-copyleft Apache License version 2. citation needed] In response to this, there are some projects that build complete operating systems based on AOSP as free software, the first being CyanogenMod (see section Open-source community below). On more recent phones, its place is occupied by a task key used to access the list of recently used apps when actuated.