14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that two of the world's largest companies in the IT sector are preparing for a head-to-head battle for a dominant position in the netbook market. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft and the Mountain View, California-based search giant, Google are expected to provide two new operating systems designed to power some of the upcoming netbook systems on the market. Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer has recently confirmed a netbook-version of their upcoming Windows 7 operating system, following reports that ASUSTeK was interested in designing a netbook that would run on the recently released Google Android platform for mobile phones.
According to a recent news-article on the Financial Times, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer also said that the software giant was expecting Google's Android operating system, initially developed to run on smartphones, to be shipped on some of the upcoming netbooks. That would certainly place Google as a direct competitor for Microsoft in the recently emerged marked for netbook computer systems. In addition, with the first Android-based netbook PC, Google will make its debut in the market for personal computer systems, an area that has been dominated by Microsoft's operating systems over the past 25 years.
With expectations for shipments of approximately 20 million netbook units, Google's Android might be on its way to becoming one of the leading operating systems in the consumer PC market segment; especially since the Linux-based platform upon which the Android has been built enables these devices to fully provide their users with the performance required for running Internet applications and simple day-to-day office tasks.
Microsoft's Windows 7 for netbooks might also take advantage of NVIDIA's recently announced Ion platform, which is currently the reason behind an ongoing quarrel between the graphics chip maker and Intel, the developer of the highly successful Atom processor.