14 DAY TRIAL // Last year was not exactly a good year for the IT industry. Even though 2008 will be remembered as the most dismal, 2009 still saw many companies declining. Fortunately, not all segments of the market suffered the same, some even continuing to grow despite the odds and, as end-users must know full well by now, netbooks were one of the product types that performed the best. This led to not just PC makers but also software developers revising their roadmaps.
One of the projects that was driven by the growing popularity of netbooks, and which should, in turn, further propel this segment, is the Google Chrome OS. This operating system has been in development for quite some time and promises to enable a new level of performance on these entry-level personal computers.
Leaks and rumors on the Chrome OS have naturally been streaming forth for months. Now, the overall time frame for its arrival to market has finally been made official, though an exact date has still not been set. According to Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, the software platform should be completed up by late fall this year.
This means that the first netbooks running it should debut around the same time. Unfortunately, the announcement made at Computex did not mention which company would be the first to reveal such a laptop.
For devices loaded with Chrome OS, hardware makers and/or PC suppliers will have to collaborate with Google in product development and marketing. 10-inch to 12-inch laptop models are the main target of the software. Considering this, it seems likely that Acer, as one of, if not the main advocate of netbooks in general, will be the one to set the stage. This is pure speculation, of course, and it will be proven accurate or inaccurate in due time.