Android is five-years-old today. First announced on 5 November 2007, Google's mobile phone operating system has rapidly grown into the number one operating system in the world.

As we reported at the end of last week, Android now has 75 per cent market share globally, with 136 million smartphones out of 181.1 million running the OS. Of course, there are plenty of different manufacturers making Android phones in comparison to just Apple creating one new phone a year, but it's a statistic that is testament to the work put in by the Google development teams in a - relatively - short space of time.

The first commercially available Android handset, the HTC Dream, didn't actually come out until October 2008, but the Open Handset Alliance announced its intention to develop an open source mobile operating system on, what we know as Guy Fawkes Night in the UK, 5 November five years ago, so that is widely taken to be the official "birth" day.

What is strange though is that Google itself hasn't really celebrated the fact. No fanfare, no new announcements (we were partly expecting Android 5 to be announced - the portents were strong, certainly), and no Google doodle. Doesn't mean we can't toot into a party blower on its behalf, though.

Paaaarrrapppp!