Blenz Coffee
Blenz Coffee is a Canadian franchise chain of coffee shops. The first shop was opened in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1992; the chain has since grown to include a network of franchised locations, 63 in British Columbia and 1 in Calgary, Alberta Canada. Coffee house List of coffeehouse chains Coffee portal Official website
Best Buy
Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. It was founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music. In 1983, it was rebranded under its current name with more emphasis placed on consumer electronics. Internationally, Best Buy operates in Canada and Mexico, was operational in China until February 2011 and in Europe until 2012, its subsidiaries include Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales. Best Buy operates the Best Buy Mobile and Insignia brands in North America, plus Five Star in China. Best Buy sells cellular phones from Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Corporation in the United States. In Canada, carriers include Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Telus Mobility, their fighter brands, competing smaller carriers, such as SaskTel. Best Buy was named "Company of the Year" by Forbes magazine in 2004, "Specialty Retailer of the Decade" by Discount Store News in 2001, ranked in the Top 10 of "America's Most Generous Corporations" by Forbes in 2005, made Fortune magazine's list of "Most Admired Companies" in 2006. and "The Most Sustainable Company in the United States" by Barron's in 2019.
Hubert Joly serves as Best Buy's chairman and CEO. According to Yahoo! Finance, Best Buy is the largest specialty retailer in the United States consumer electronics retail industry; the company ranked No. 72 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. On August 28, 1966, Richard M. Schulze and a business partner opened Sound of Music, an electronics store specializing in high fidelity stereos in St. Paul, Minnesota. Schulze financed the opening of his first store with his personal savings and a second mortgage he took out on his family's home. In 1967, Sound of Music acquired Bergo Company. Sound of Music made about $58,000 in profits in its first year. In 1969, Sound of Music had three stores and Schulze bought out his business partner. Sound of Music operated nine stores throughout Minnesota by 1978. In 1981, the Roseville, Sound of Music location, at the time the largest and most profitable Sound of Music store, was hit by a tornado; the store's roof was sheared off and showroom destroyed.
In response, Schulze decided to have a "Tornado Sale" of damaged and excess stock in the damaged store's parking lot. He poured the remainder of his marketing budget into advertising the sale, promising "best buys" on everything. Sound of Music made more money during the four-day sale. In 1983, with seven stores and $10 million in annual sales, Sound of Music was renamed Best Buy Company, Inc; the company expanded its product offerings to include home appliances and VCRs, in an attempt to expand beyond its then-core customer base of 15-to-18-year-old males. That year Best Buy opened its first superstore in Burnsville, Minnesota; the Burnsville location featured a high-volume, low price business model, borrowed from Schulze's successful Tornado Sale in 1981. In its first year, the Burnsville store out-performed all other Best. Best Buy debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in 1987. In 1989, the company introduced a new store concept dubbed "Concept II". Concept II replaced dimly lit industrial-style stores with brighter and more fashionably fixtured stores.
Stores began placing all stock on the sales floor rather than in a stock room, had fewer salespersons and provided more self-help product information for its customers. Best Buy did away with commissioned salespeople; the commission-free sales environment "created a more relaxed shopping environment free of the high-pressure sales tactics used in other stores," but was unpopular with salespersons and suppliers. Some suppliers, such as Maytag and Sony, were upset that salespeople would no longer be pushing their products and stopped selling their wares in Best Buy stores; the suppliers returned after Best Buy's sales and revenue grew following the roll-out of Concept II. In 1992, the company achieved $1 billion in annual revenues. In 1995, Best Buy debuted "Concept III" stores; the Concept III stores included expanded product offerings, interactive touchscreen kiosks that displayed product information for both customers and employees, demonstration areas for products such as surround sound stereo systems and videogames.
Best Buy launched its "Concept IV" stores with its expansion into New England in 1998. Concept IV stores included an open layout with products organized by category, cash registers located throughout the store, smaller stores than Concept III stores; the stores had large areas for demonstrating home theater systems and computer software. In 1999, Best Buy was added to Standard & Poor's S&P 500. In 2000, Best Buy formed Redline Entertainment, an independent music label and action-sports video distributor; the company acquired Magnolia Hi-Fi, Inc. an audio-video retailer located in California and Oregon, in December 2000. In January 2001, Best Buy acquired Musicland Stores Corporation, a Minnetonka, Minnesota-based retailer that sold home entertainment products under the Sam Goody, Suncoast Motion Picture Company, Media Play and OnCue brands. Best Buy purchased the company for $425 million in cash and the assumption of $271 million of Musicland debt; that year, Best Buy acquired the British Columbia, Canada-based electronics-chain Future Shop Ltd. marking its entrance to the international marketplace.
Under the deal, Future Shop was purchased for $37
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series, it competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. It was unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information announced that month at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo; the Xbox 360 features an online service, Xbox Live, expanded from its previous iteration on the original Xbox and received regular updates during the console's lifetime. Available in free and subscription-based varieties, Xbox Live allows users to: play games online. In addition to online multimedia features, it allows users to stream media from local PCs. Several peripherals have been released, including wireless controllers, expanded hard drive storage, the Kinect motion sensing camera; the release of these additional services and peripherals helped the Xbox brand grow from gaming-only to encompassing all multimedia, turning it into a hub for living-room computing entertainment.
Launched worldwide across 2005–2006, the Xbox 360 was in short supply in many regions, including North America and Europe. The earliest versions of the console suffered from a high failure rate, indicated by the so-called "Red Ring of Death", necessitating an extension of the device's warranty period. Microsoft released two redesigned models of the console: the Xbox 360 S in 2010, the Xbox 360 E in 2013; as of June 2014, 84 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide, making it the seventh-highest-selling video game console in history, the highest-selling console made by an American company. Although not the best-selling console of its generation, the Xbox 360 was deemed by TechRadar to be the most influential through its emphasis on digital media distribution and multiplayer gaming on Xbox Live; the Xbox 360's successor, the Xbox One, was released on November 22, 2013. On April 20, 2016, Microsoft announced that it would end the production of new Xbox 360 hardware, although the company will continue to support the platform.
Known during development as Xbox Next, Xbox 2, Xbox FS or NextBox, the Xbox 360 was conceived in early 2003. In February 2003, planning for the Xenon software platform began, was headed by Microsoft's Vice President J Allard; that month, Microsoft held an event for 400 developers in Bellevue, Washington to recruit support for the system. That month, Peter Moore, former president of Sega of America, joined Microsoft. On August 12, 2003, ATI signed on to produce the graphic processing unit for the new console, a deal, publicly announced two days later. Before the launch of the Xbox 360, several Alpha development kits were spotted using Apple's Power Mac G5 hardware; this was because the system's PowerPC 970 processor running the same PowerPC architecture that the Xbox 360 would run under IBM's Xenon processor. The cores of the Xenon processor were developed using a modified version of the PlayStation 3's Cell Processor PPE architecture. According to David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, the IBM employees were "hiding" their work from Sony and Toshiba, IBM's partners in developing the Cell Processor.
Jeff Minter created the music visualization program Neon, included with the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 was released on November 2005, in the United States and Canada, it was launched in Mexico, Chile, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Russia. In its first year on the market, the system launched in 36 countries, more countries than any other console has launched in a single year. In 2009, IGN named the Xbox 360 the sixth-greatest video game console of all time, out of a field of 25. Although not the best-selling console of the seventh-generation, the Xbox 360 was deemed by TechRadar to be the most influential, by emphasizing digital media distribution and online gaming through Xbox Live, by popularizing game achievement awards. PC Magazine considered the Xbox 360 the prototype for online gaming as it "proved that online gaming communities could thrive in the console space". Five years after the Xbox 360's original debut, the well-received Kinect motion capture camera was released, which set the record of being the fastest selling consumer electronic device in history, extended the life of the console.
Edge ranked Xbox 360 the second-best console of the 1993–2013 period, stating "It had its own social network, cross-game chat, new indie games every week, the best version of just about every multiformat game... Killzone is no Halo and nowadays Gran Turismo is no Forza, but it's not about the exclusives—there's nothing to trump Naughty Dog's PS3 output, after all. Rather, it's about the choices Microsoft made back in the original Xbox's lifetime; the PC-like architecture meant the early EA Sports games ran at 60fps compared to only 30 on PS3, Xbox Live meant every dedicated player had an existing friends list, Halo meant Microsoft had the killer next-generation exclusive. And when developers demo games on PC now they do it with a 360 pad—another industry benchmark, a critical one." The Xbox 360 began production only 69 days before launch, Microsoft was not able to supply enough systems to meet initial consumer demand in Europe or North America, selling out upon release in all regions except in Japan.
Forty thousand units were offered for sale on auction site eBay during the initial week of
PlayStation 3
The PlayStation 3 is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the successor to PlayStation 2, is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles, it was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November 17, 2006, in North America, March 23, 2007, in Europe and Australia. The PlayStation 3 competed against consoles such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles; the console was first announced at E3 2005, was released at the end of 2006. It was the first console to use Blu-ray Disc as its primary storage medium; the console was the first PlayStation to integrate social gaming services, including the PlayStation Network, as well as the first to be controllable from a handheld console, through its remote connectivity with PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita. In September 2009, the Slim model of the PlayStation 3 was released, it no longer provided the hardware ability to run PS2 games. It was lighter and thinner than the original version, featured a redesigned logo and marketing design, as well as a minor start-up change in software.
A Super Slim variation was released in late 2012, further refining and redesigning the console. During its early years, the system had a critically negative reception, due to its high price, a complex processor architecture and a lack of quality games, but was praised for its Blu-ray capabilities and "untapped potential"; the reception would get more positive over time. The system had a slow start in the market but managed to recover after the introduction of the Slim model, its successor, the PlayStation 4, was released in November 2013. On September 29, 2015, Sony confirmed that sales of the PlayStation 3 were to be discontinued in New Zealand, but the system remained in production in other markets. Shipments of new units to Europe and Australia ended in March 2016, followed by North America which ended in October 2016. Heading into 2017, Japan was the last territory where new units were still being produced until May 29, 2017, when Sony confirmed the PlayStation 3 was discontinued in Japan.
The PlayStation 3 began development in 2001 when Ken Kutaragi the President of Sony Computer Entertainment, announced that Sony, IBM would collaborate on developing the Cell microprocessor. At the time, Shuhei Yoshida led a group of programmers within this hardware team to explore next-generation game creation. By early 2005, focus within Sony shifted towards developing PS3 launch titles. Sony unveiled PlayStation 3 to the public on May 16, 2005, at E3 2005, along with a boomerang-shaped prototype design of the Sixaxis controller. A functional version of the system was not present there, nor at the Tokyo Game Show in September 2005, although demonstrations were held at both events on software development kits and comparable personal computer hardware. Video footage based on the predicted PlayStation 3 specifications was shown; the initial prototype shown in May 2005 featured two HDMI ports, three Ethernet ports and six USB ports. Two hardware configurations were announced for the console: a 20 GB model and a 60 GB model, priced at US$499 and US$599, respectively.
The 60 GB model was to be the only configuration to feature an HDMI port, Wi-Fi internet, flash card readers and a chrome trim with the logo in silver. Both models were announced for a simultaneous worldwide release: November 11, 2006, for Japan and November 17, 2006, for North America and Europe. On September 6, 2006, Sony announced that PAL region PlayStation 3 launch would be delayed until March 2007, because of a shortage of materials used in the Blu-ray drive. At the Tokyo Game Show on September 22, 2006, Sony announced that it would include an HDMI port on the 20 GB system, but a chrome trim, flash card readers, silver logo and Wi-Fi would not be included; the launch price of the Japanese 20 GB model was reduced by over 20%, the 60 GB model was announced for an open pricing scheme in Japan. During the event, Sony showed 27 playable PS3 games running on final hardware. PlayStation 3 was first released in Japan on November 11, 2006, at 07:00. According to Media Create, 81,639 PS3 systems were sold within 24 hours of its introduction in Japan.
Soon after its release in Japan, PS3 was released in North America on November 17, 2006. Reports of violence surrounded the release of PS3. A customer was shot, campers were robbed at gunpoint, customers were shot in a drive-by shooting with BB guns, 60 campers fought over 10 systems; the console was planned for a global release through November, but at the start of September the release in Europe and the rest of the world was delayed until March. With it being a somewhat last-minute delay, some companies had taken deposits for pre-orders, at which Sony informed customers that they were eligible for full refunds or could continue the pre-order. On January 24, 2007, Sony announced that PlayStation 3 would go on sale on March 23, 2007, in Europe, the Middle East and New Zealand; the system sold about 600,000 units in its first two days. On March 7, 2007, the 60 GB PlayStation 3 launched in Singapore with a price of S$799; the console was launched in South Korea on June 16, 2007, as a single version equipped with an 80 GB hard drive and IPTV.
Following speculation that Sony was working on a'slim' model, Sony announced the PS3 CECH-2000 model on August 18, 2009, at the Sony Gamescom press conference
Metro Vancouver Regional District
Metro Vancouver is a political body and corporate entity designated by provincial legislation as one of the regional districts in British Columbia, Canada. The official legal name is the Metro Vancouver Regional District, the organization was known as the Greater Vancouver Regional District from 1968 to 2017. Further, it was known as the Regional District of Fraser–Burrard for nearly one year upon incorporating in 1967; the MVRD is under the direction of 23 local authorities. The regional district's most populous city is Vancouver, Metro Vancouver's administrative offices are located in the City of Burnaby; the MVRD's boundaries match those of the Vancouver census metropolitan area as identified by Statistics Canada. The Greater Vancouver Water District and the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District were established in 1924 and 1956 respectively; the Government of British Columbia incorporated a regional district for this western portion of the Lower Mainland named the Regional District of Fraser-Burrard on June 29, 1967.
Just under a year the regional district was renamed as the Greater Vancouver Regional District on June 13, 1968. In 2007, the GVRD applied to change its official legal name a second time to "Metro Vancouver", deemed more recognizable at the time. British Columbia's Minister of Community Services denied the application due to the absence of the term "regional district" within the proposed new name, though it was suggested that the GVRD could brand itself under the unofficial name of Metro Vancouver. After nine years, with growing public recognition of Metro Vancouver, the overall success of the brand, confusion between the brand and the official legal name of the regional district, the GVRD motioned in 2016 to change its name to the Metro Vancouver Regional District; the regional district was therefore formally renamed a second time by the Government of British Columbia on January 30, 2017 to the Metro Vancouver Regional District. The Metro Vancouver Regional District is located east of the Strait of Georgia and north of the State of Washington and is bisected by the Fraser River.
The boundaries of the MVRD match those of the Vancouver CMA. In the 2016 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the Metro Vancouver Regional District recorded a population of 2,463,431 living in 960,894 of its 1,027,613 total private dwellings, a change of 6.5% from its revised 2011 population of 2,313,328. With a land area of 2,882.68 km2, it had a population density of 854.6/km2 in 2016, making it the regional district in British Columbia with the greatest population and population density in British Columbia. This regional district comprises 23 local authorities as members: 21 municipalities, one electoral area and one treaty First Nation. Electoral Area A comprises all unincorporated land within the regional district boundaries, which totals about 818 square kilometres. Most of the area is in the northernmost part of the district, including residential areas and isolated dwellings on Howe Sound between Lions Bay and Horseshoe Bay, on Indian Arm to the north of Deep Cove and Belcarra/Anmore and on the west side of Pitt Lake to the north of Port Coquitlam.
Other areas included are Barnston Island on the Fraser River, Passage Island between Bowen Island and West Vancouver, the urban communities of the University of British Columbia and the University Endowment Lands, in which 98% of the population of Electoral Area A lives. There are seventeen Indian reserves within the geographical area that are not subject to governance by local authorities or the regional district; the cities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack and the district of Mission, located to the east, although linked to Vancouver in promotions and tourism, are part of a separate regional district, the Fraser Valley Regional District. Metro Vancouver technically comprises four separate corporate entities: the Metro Vancouver Regional District, the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District, the Greater Vancouver Water District and the Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation; each of these is governed by a board of directors. The board of the MVRD has 40 directors coming from the 23 local authorities.
The number of directors coming from each local authority is determined by population, the number of votes allocated to each director further helps proportionally represent the population distribution of the region. Each board director is an elected official of one of the local authorities, with the exception of the representative for Electoral Area A, which has no elected council; as of 2017, the organization had about 1,500 employees. The current organizational structure shows ten departments reporting to the Chief Administrative Officer: Human Resources & Corporate Services; the principal function of Metro Vancouver is to administer resources and services which are common across the metropolitan area. The Metro Vancouver Board has defined its strategic priorities for 2015 through 2018 in its Board Strategic Plan; the organization categorizes its work into eight action areas, as described in the following subsections. However, 84% of the organization's budget is spent in three of those areas - the three utilities.
Metro Vancouver's commitments and its members' commitments to each action area are outlined in eight board-approved management plans as referenced bel
Boston Pizza
Boston Pizza is a Canadian-based restaurant chain that owns and franchises locations in Canada, the United States and Mexico. Boston Pizza began in Edmonton, Alberta, on August 12, 1964, when a Greek immigrant, Gus Agioritis, opened Boston Pizza and Spaghetti House. By 1970, Boston Pizza had 17 locations in Western Canada. One of the first franchisees was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer. In 1968, he noticed the growing popularity of Boston Pizza and purchased the rights to open a restaurant in Penticton, British Columbia. While in Penticton, he met a chartered accountant, he acted as Treliving's business consultant for four years, and, in 1973, became Treliving's business partner. Over 10 years, they opened 16 restaurants in British Columbia. In 1983, Treliving and Melville acquired the Boston Pizza chain from Ron Coyle, who had acquired the company from Agioritis in 1978; the two divested 15 of their restaurants to other franchisees, converted one restaurant to a corporate training restaurant and set about establishing systems and operating standards to standardize company operations.
In the early 1980s, Boston Pizza expanded into Eastern Canada but by late 1985 most, if not all restaurants in Ontario were closed. In 1986, Boston Pizza became the official pizza supplier for Expo 86 in Vancouver; this major success for the company led to expansion in Eastern Canada. In the next two years, it led to another 17 franchises. By 1995, the chain had grown to 95 restaurants in Western Canada with sales in excess of $110 million. Over the many years the restaurants had become a success, more sports bars had been established as an integral part of the business. In 1997, Mark Pacinda was hired to bring the chain to more eastern areas of Canada. Once an Eastern Office was opened in Mississauga, another restaurant was opened in Ottawa in September 1998; the company opened a regional office in Laval, Quebec, in April 2004. As of December 2012, there are 348 Boston Pizza restaurants in Canada, over 40 in the U. S. and Mexico. Boston's was the U. S. and Mexican version of the Boston Pizza franchise.
In 1998, a U. S. headquarters was set up in Texas. The Boston Pizza name was changed to Boston's The Gourmet Pizza and Sports Bar. Boston's had over 30 stores in the U. S. and four in Mexico. As part of an advertising campaign created by ZIP communication, during the first round of the 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs, when the Boston Bruins played the Montreal Canadiens, the company temporarily rebranded its Montreal locations as "Montreal Pizza". In the final round of the playoffs, when the Bruins played the Vancouver Canucks, the company temporarily rebranded its British Columbia locations as "Vancouver Pizza". In 2002, Boston Pizza commenced a lawsuit against Boston Market in the Federal Court of Canada over the trademark use of the word "Boston" in Canada. In its defence, Boston Market alleged that Boston Pizza's trademarks were invalid because they described a style of pizza from a specific area; the dispute continued after Boston Market ceased operations in Canada in 2004. The parties settled the dispute in 2008 under an agreement that Boston Market would not use the words "Boston" or "Boston Market" in Canada for five years for restaurants or any food or drink products.
Boston Market agreed that it would not challenge Boston Pizza's use in Canada of any trademark that uses the words "Boston" or "Boston Pizza". List of Canadian restaurant chains List of Canadian pizza chains Pizza cake, a Boston Pizza product which went viral Official website
Android (operating system)
Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google. It is based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software, is designed for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars, Wear OS for wrist watches, each with a specialized user interface. Variants of Android are used on game consoles, digital cameras, PCs and other electronics. Developed by Android Inc. which Google bought in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007, with the first commercial Android device launched in September 2008. The operating system has since gone through multiple major releases, with the current version being 9 "Pie", released in August 2018. Google released the first Android Q beta on all Pixel phones on March 13, 2019; the core Android source code is known as Android Open Source Project, is licensed under the Apache License. Android is associated with a suite of proprietary software developed by Google, called Google Mobile Services that frequently comes pre-installed in devices, which includes the Google Chrome web browser and Google Search and always includes core apps for services such as Gmail, as well as the application store and digital distribution platform Google Play, associated development platform.
These apps are licensed by manufacturers of Android devices certified under standards imposed by Google, but AOSP has been used as the basis of competing Android ecosystems, such as Amazon.com's Fire OS, which use their own equivalents to GMS. Android has been the best-selling OS worldwide on smartphones since 2011 and on tablets since 2013; as of May 2017, it has over two billion monthly active users, the largest installed base of any operating system, as of December 2018, the Google Play store features over 2.6 million apps. The name Andrew and the noun Android share the Greek root andros. Andy Rubin picked android.com as his personal website, his colleagues used Android as his nickname at work. That became the name of the company he founded, the name of the operating system they developed. Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California, in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, Chris White. Rubin described the Android project as "tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences".
The early intentions of the company were to develop an advanced operating system for digital cameras, this was the basis of its pitch to investors in April 2004. The company decided that the market for cameras was not large enough for its goals, by five months it had diverted its efforts and was pitching Android as a handset operating system that would rival Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Rubin had difficulty attracting investors early on, Android was facing eviction from its office space. Steve Perlman, a close friend of Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an envelope, shortly thereafter wired an undisclosed amount as seed funding. Perlman refused a stake in the company, has stated "I did it because I believed in the thing, I wanted to help Andy."In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million. Its key employees, including Rubin and White, joined Google as part of the acquisition. Not much was known about the secretive Android at the time, with the company having provided few details other than that it was making software for mobile phones.
At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradeable system. Google had "lined up a series of hardware components and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation". Speculation about Google's intention to enter the mobile communications market continued to build through December 2006. An early prototype had a close resemblance to a BlackBerry phone, with no touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard, but the arrival of 2007's Apple iPhone meant that Android "had to go back to the drawing board". Google changed its Android specification documents to state that "Touchscreens will be supported", although "the Product was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption, therefore a touchscreen cannot replace physical buttons". By 2008, both Nokia and BlackBerry announced touch-based smartphones to rival the iPhone 3G, Android's focus switched to just touchscreens.
The first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream known as T-Mobile G1, announced on September 23, 2008. On November 5, 2007, the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of technology companies including Google, device manufacturers such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung, wireless carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile, chipset makers such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, unveiled itself, with a goal to develop "the first open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices". Within a year, the Open Handset Alliance faced two other open source competitors, the Symbian Foundation and the LiMo Foundation, the latter developing a Linux-based mobile operating system like Google. In September 2007, InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony. Since 2008, Android has seen numerous updates which have incrementally improved the operating system, adding new features and fixing bugs in previous releases.
Each major release is named in alphabetical order after a dessert or sugary treat, with the first few Android versions being called "Cupcake", "Donut"
