Google's head of Android to take new role Google's head of Android, Andy Rubin, is stepping back from his role on the smartphone platform, the latest in a series of sudden management changes at the top of the world's largest technology companies. Mr Rubin joined Google in 2005 when it acquired Android, an open-source mobile operating system, which the search group relaunched months after the debut of the Apple iPhone in 2007. Since then Android has become the world's dominant smartphone platform powering a total of 750m devices, including Samsung's Galaxy S series, which are vying with the iPhone for leadership of the handset market. Google announced on Wednesday that Mr Rubin would step down as its senior vice-president of mobile to take on an unspecified new role at the company. He will be replaced by Sundar Pichai, a longstanding Google executive, who will add Android to his duties leading Chrome, its web browser and "cloud" operating system for laptops, and Apps, such as Gmail. Mr Rubin's departure from Android comes five months after Scott Forstall, Apple's software chief, left the iPhone maker in its biggest management reshuffle in years. Then in November, Steve Sinofsky, Microsoft's head of Windows, abruptly left the company after a radical, mobile-centric redesign of the operating system was launched. In a blogpost announcing the management changes, Google's chief executive Larry Page said the move came as the world shifted into a "new computing environment," with accelerating adoption of mobile technology and new automated services such as Google Now that can "take care of the hard work" in organising and communicating on portable devices. "Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android - and with a really strong leadership team in place - Andy's decided it's time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google," Mr Page wrote. Despite rumours last year that the Android chief was leaving Google, Mr Page hinted that Mr Rubin would continue to work on more ambitious new projects at the company, saying: "Andy, more moonshots please!" - a reference to imaginative new projects that have a high chance of failure. Mr Rubin was a champion of the open-source approach which meant any device vendor could use Android, leading Google to build partnerships with more than 60 manufacturers. Speaking to the press at last month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mr Rubin said: "In general, open is good, competition is good. We built Android because there was no open operating system. However, the dominance of Samsung in the Android market and the success of Apple's more vertically integrated approach has pushed Google to take more control of its platform, expanding its "Nexus" family of devices - made by partners including Samsung, Asus and LG - to include tablets as well as smartphones and spending more on marketing its flagship hardware. Asked about Samsung's dominance in Android devices, he said it was "normal and fine." " I think in a world where you have Apple building very vertically integrated products . . . I think that other companies look at that and see how much of that makes sense for them," he said. I think it's natural to be a company that's as successful as Samsung to look at other platforms as an opportunity to differentiate. Even after its acquisition of Motorola in 2011, Google has always insisted that it will continue to partner many different vendors on Android. "Android's not an island, Android's something that anybody can join," Mr Rubin said. My advice would be, don't build islands, it doesn't work any more. You have to build ecosystems that are across manufacturers. In a supportive statement, Samsung's head of mobile and IT, JK Shin, thanked Mr Rubin for his "contribution," saying: "Samsung will remain committed to the continuing success of the Android ecosystem and will work closely with Sundar Pichai." Google's changes come the day before Samsung is due to unveil its latest Galaxy S4 smartphone in New York. According to Gartner, an analyst group, Samsung was the leading smartphone maker last year with a 30.3 per cent market share, compared with Apple's 19.1 per cent. Android's share of the overall mobile phone market has grown from 12.5 per cent in 2011 to 25.9 per cent last year, rising to a forecast 39.2 per cent in 2013, Gartner said.