Chrome OS Smartbooks to Cost More than Windows Devices

The smartbook market hasn't even been defined very well and already analysts are all over it, trying to predict as accurately as possible what the performance of such devices will be, what prices they will have and how they will survive alongside all other products. One of the main elements that seemed to give a decent life expectancy to this market was the use of Chrome OS. More recently, however, reports have emerged stating that this operating system may make life harder for smartbooks instead of improving it.

EETimes reports that the hardware requirements laid out by Google's Chrome OS might make smartbooks running it more expensive than an equivalent device running Windows. This is a rather big drawback, considering that Windows has a much larger application support.

So far, Chrome's support for ARM chips seemed to provide it with the price edge required in order to successfully compete with x86 platforms. However, it appears that the OS has other hardware requirements besides what mobile PCs usually have, such as stronger graphics, accelerometers and other sensors. This means that, despite the lower cost of ARM chips, Chrome OS smartbooks may cost more than Windows devices because of the extra hardware required.

“There's a serious challenge for Chrome, and I don't think people will like it. PC OEMs say the hardware requirements – still under NDA – will make the systems actually more expensive than a Windows device, yet they don't have anywhere near the applications support,” stated Bob O'Donnell, vice president of clients and displays at IDC.

Mr. O'Donnel also believes that ARM, while likely to score big with specialized gadgets, is unlikely to grab a hold of the netbook or notebook market because, he says, “clamshell systems need Windows or Mac OS because if a system looks like a notebook people want it to act like one. [...] I think there are interesting opportunities for ARM with specialized devices because they can have a proprietary OS kernel and other elements. That's an area ARM will have opportunities, but the x86 owns multipurpose systems.”