What is the Common Character For Android Users?

Those of you with long memories might recall an infographic we ran last December -- "Mr. Android." It was a composite picture of the average Android smartphone user, based on the Facebook fans of a startup called BlueStacks, which lets you run Android apps on PCs. Its average Android fan was a male American decked out in T-shirts, jeans and sneakers.

Mr. Android was mostly partnered up (well, 63% of him had a significant other). But if he were single, and heterosexual, he could do a lot worse than Ms. Mac -- a composite of BlueStacks' average Mac-using Facebook fan, based on about 10 times the amount of data as Mr. Android. (BlueStacks' Facebook fan base has grown from 145,000 to more than a million in the last year; the information was burnished with Nielsen numbers).

Google Shifts Tack on Android

Google Inc. GOOG +1.18% is shifting its strategy for its Android mobile operating system, in a bid to create a united front with smartphone and tablet makers to take on rivals like Apple Inc. AAPL -0.90% and prevent wireless carriers from controlling the devices

Google plans to give multiple mobile-device makers early access to new releases of Android and to sell those devices directly to consumers, said people familiar with the matter. That is a shift from Google's previous practice, when it joined with with only one hardware maker at a time to produce "lead devices," before releasing the software to other device makers. Those lead devices were then sold to consumers through wireless carriers or retailers.

The expansion of direct sales marks a bid to exert more control over key features and apps that run on Android-powered phones and tablets, thus reducing the influence of wireless carriers over such devices, these people said. Wireless carriers typically handle marketing and sales of devices and thus can exert some control over the services that run on them.