Google's Android has too many flavors and Apple isn't the only one who thinks so

Walking through Google's campus on a warm February afternoon, Hiroshi Lockheimer pauses and points to two tourists smiling at their outstretched selfie stick. The world-famous Googleplex is always filled with tourists, who come to gawk and admire the sprawling headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley.

"Ten years ago, I would have never imagined that," he says laughing, as we pass by.

But it's actually kind of his fault that they're even there. Lockheimer is a big part of the reason smartphones are everywhere. For the past decade, he's helped craft Google's Android operating system, now the most popular mobile software on the planet. Five months ago, he became chief of Android, overseeing development and partnerships and strategizing on how to say ahead of Apple's iOS software for the iPhone and iPad.

When Lockheimer joined Google in 2006, most of the world was still using feature phones that had little or no access to the Internet. The iPhone, unveiled a year later by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, definitely helped popularize the idea of smartphones. And even though Apple sold millions of iPhones in the first year, it wasn't until Android debuted in 2008 that smartphones really went mainstream.

Instead of tying its software to one flagship device (and one carrier, at first) like Apple, Google gave away its software for free. Handset makers including Samsung, HTC, Sony and LG lined up and began offering Android-powered phones that ranged, in price and functionality, from high to low. Suddenly, smartphones were affordable to wider swaths of the population.