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Which came first, Android or Java?

Which came first, Android or Java?
Java
1995 — 13 years before Android

Java came first, by 13 years. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

Side by side

Android Java
Year 2008 1995
Date 2008-09-23 1995-05-23
Category technology technology
What happened The HTC Dream, the first Android phone, was announced. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

Android

Android as a company was founded in October 2003 — four years before the iPhone — originally to build an operating system for digital cameras. Google bought it in 2005 and the first Android phone shipped in October 2008, fifteen months after the iPhone went on sale. So Android is older than the iPhone as a project and younger as a product, which is why the question needs the distinction stated.

Java

Java was announced in May 1995, having started in 1991 as a project called Oak aimed at interactive television — a market that did not exist yet. Its promise was "write once, run anywhere", achieved by compiling to bytecode for a virtual machine rather than to a specific processor. JavaScript arrived seven months later and was named after it purely as a marketing decision; the two languages are unrelated.

Common questions

Which came first, Android or Java?
Java, by 13 years — 1995 against 2008.
When did Android start?
2008. The HTC Dream, the first Android phone, was announced.
When did Java start?
1995. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked