14 DAY TRIAL // While rumors have been going around the web saying that Acer was planning on launching its first Chrome OS-based netbook sometime during 2010, a more recent report in Digitimes claims that Jim Wong, senior corporate vice president and president of IT product business group at Acer, confirmed this idea. According to the report, Wong allegedly disclosed some information on this upcoming device in an interview with Bloomberg.
Chrome will be Google's own operating system and will supposedly enable a higher energy efficiency and smoother application running on low-cost mobile computers, also known as netbooks. The rumors that Acer would be launching a Chrome netbook in the second half of the ongoing year aren't exactly new, with some of the earlier such reports dating back to early December. Digitimes now claims that Mr. Wong told Bloomberg that the device would be coming out in the third quarter, as initially suggested.
But that's not all the reports say. Acer allegedly even disclosed the overall marketing performance expectations. Acer estimates that its total shipments of netbooks for 2010 will reach about 12 to 15 million. Out of these, the company expects that the sales of chrome OS devices will make up about 6.7 to 8.3 percent of the total. This would roughly translate into approximately one million units. This sounds rather optimistic given the fact that the netbook will have less than half a year to prove its own and its OS' quality, as well as to gain the required popularity.
Unfortunately, the report did not contain any information on the hardware to be used in the netbook's configuration, nor was there any mention of the contract maker. However, Wong was reported to have disclosed information on another product, namely its upcoming e-readers. These will, supposedly, launch in Europe and Asia during the same third quarter as the Chrome OS netbook.
Acer is set to start its own application store for netbooks and smartphones in the later part of 2010.