What is the purpose of the Intent mechanism in Android and what actions can it initiate?

In Android, the Intent mechanism is used for passing messages between application components or between different applications. An Intent can initiate the following actions:

• Launching an Activity (screen) — for example, opening a new screen or switching to another application.
• Starting a Service — to perform background tasks.
• Sending a Broadcast — broadcasting messages to all interested components.

An Intent can be explicit (specifying a particular component) or implicit (containing an action that any suitable component can handle). This allows flexible linking of different parts of the application and interaction with other applications.