The guide on these pages are primarily intended for the Pocket Edition of Minecraft, if you are looking for a guide to the standard version of Considering the well established popularity of the game, the emergence of versions for portable platforms is not really a surprise – plus the creators of the game have been very vocal about their desire to see the Portable Edition launched, with a focus upon the popular Android and iOS platforms.
A quick check of the official stats page over at minecraft.net at the time this was written reveals that 9,601,724 gamers had purchased a licensed copy of the game, with 10,137 of those being bought in the last 24 hours.