Chrome OS to grab a share of the tablet market when it comes out

Feb 2, 2010 16:13 GMT  ·  By

With the recent launch of the iPad, the year of the tablet finally started, regardless of the mixed feelings that the iPad's lack of Flash and USB have caused. One company that did not seem very interested in the product from the very start was Google, which came up with a Chrome OS tablet concept just two days before the iPad official announcement.

The Chrome OS is scheduled to debut sometime this year and is expected to grab a share of the growing netbook market. Now, however, it seems that the still unborn plans to be adopted by more than one platform. The Chromium Projects is a website dedicated to both the open-source Chromium browser as well as the still-in-development Chromium OS. The same site has a section dedicated to the form factors which this operating system aims for, list which, unsurprisingly, includes the tablet form factor.

The concept tablet shown in the photos published on the website is a super slim device with touch capabilities and special functionality features. These include a keyboard interaction with the screen (anchored, split, attached to focus), zooming UI, side tabs and launchers that are displayed as an overlay, with touch or search provided as a means to access websites. Not only that, but the concept tablet is supposedly even capable of creating multiple browsers on screen during a launcher.

A tablet running the Chrome OS would definitely be not only feasible but also quite popular, that is if the company manages to design the operating system as the lightweight, fast and power-efficient software that it wants it to be. A suitable software platform for tablets is really the only element needed for high-performance tablets, considering that the hardware platform is already available under the guise of the NVIDIA Tegra 2.

The Chromium team suggests that, for optimum enjoyments of a Chrome OS tablet, the screen would have to be between 5-inch and 10-inch in diagonal, a requirement already met by MIDs, tablets and netbooks. The bottom line is, if Google manages to bring about its Chrome dream, a Tegra-Chrome combination would definitely be a strong competitor to the iPad.