Introduction

Everywhere around the world, people are buying smartphones. If you take a walk down the street, people around you are checking e-mail, browsing the internet, listening to music, watching YouTube videos, and many other things using only their cellular phones. One of the main reasons for this smartphone explosion is a little operating system called Android. It's effects on IT cannot be understated and its role in the future of IT is only constrained by the limits of a programmer's imagination. By examining the background, benefits, legal/ethical problems, security issues, social issues, and some known future applications of Android, we can see where this operating system is headed and some of the pitfalls it will encounter along the way.