Apple created the modern smartphone as we know it, but Android went on to dominate the market through numerous partnerships with carriers and lower prices. In the first quarter of this year, a staggering 86% of smartphones sold worldwide ran on Android, according to data from Gartner.
Android's dominance is all the more striking considering the team was caught off guard by the iPhone launch.
"Google and Apple were working on developing the smartphone very much at the same time," says Fred Vogelstein, author of Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution.
Google had acquired Android, then a small startup, in 2005 to gain a stronger footing on mobile devices. In 2006, Google's Android team worked on designing its own software and a phone that looked like a BlackBerry.
Then Jobs unveiled a radically different device on stage in January 2007. The head of Android, Andy Rubin, was in a car when the presentation kicked off. He asked the driver to pull over to watch it online, according to Dogfight.
"Holy crap," Rubin said in the car, according to the book. "I guess we're not going to ship that phone."