Acer is reportedly planning to debut a number of Google Chrome-based devices at Computex 2010.
According to VentureBeat, the devices could theoretically include netbooks, smartbooks and tablets powered by a range of ARM processors.
However, the publication conceded that it “did not yet know what [specific] devices” Acer will be launching.
“Recently, there’s been talk of Samsung developing ARM-based smartbooks running Chrome OS, as well as support for Nvidia Tegra 2 devices…[But] it’s still unclear how Chrome OS-equipped netbooks will coexist with those running Google’s Android mobile OS,” wrote VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar and Matthaus Krzykowski.
“[Our] prediction? Google will probably settle on Android for tablets eventually. Chrome OS, which is clearly better suited for devices with keyboards and trackpads, will find itself on more netbooks and smartbooks.”
Meanwhile, Brad Linder of Liliputing reacted to the above-mentioned report with some skepticism.
“VentureBeat makes it sound like you’ll be able to walk into a store and buy a device powered by Chrome soon, I don’t think that’s the case. Computex tends to be a place where companies can show off new products that might not hit the market for months,” opined Linder.
“And as I’ve already mentioned, Google Chrome is still in the early development stages and Google doesn’t expect to release a stable version until later this year…Right now, it simply can’t do many of those things…Which is why I seriously doubt that we’ll see Acer actually release any Google Chrome-based devices next week. But we might see some demonstration projects, which would still be very cool.”
Lee Mathews of Download Squad expressed similar sentiments.
“I’m not sure if you’ve built the Chromium OS source code lately, but it’s far from complete. The user interface still needs quite a bit of polish, the window manager behaves strangely from time to time, there’s that whole cloud printing thing going on, and plugging in USB flash drives can cause Hindenburg-esque crashes,” explained Mathews.
“Not to mention the fact that we haven’t even seen a developer preview build from Google yet. My guess is that this is more of an unveiling of hardware – ARM-based, probably…Chrome OS devices in time for Christmas? That sounds reasonable to me. Acer launching models in two weeks? Not so much.”
