Acer recently announced that it’ll be selling Android netbooks later this year. This will likely set off a round of news articles and opinion pieces calling for the death of Windows on netbooks. That’s not going to happen, though. I’d read this news as Acer using Android to replace the Linpus Linux Lite interface that the company currently offers on its Linux-powered netbook selections.
The Linux interface that Acer currently uses is fine but it’s a far cry from Android, so using the more-polished, relatively popular open source platform will certainly be a step up. But will Android on netbooks take a huge bite out of Windows-based netbooks? Probably not, at least not at first. There’s a reason Best Buy, for example, decided to sell Windows-only netbooks after a short dance with Linux offerings. Regular people are comfortable with Windows and a lot of regular people buy netbooks. And when a regular person buys a computer they expect a computer operating system, not a cell phone operating system. Not that Android is purely a cell phone operating system by any means, but regular people equate Android to cell phones (if they’ve even heard of Android).
For the rest of us, though, especially those of us who use Android regularly, the idea of Android on a netbook makes the choice between Linux and Windows a bit murkier, especially if there’s a big difference in price. Windows XP apparently costs $25 for a PC maker to load onto a netbook, which may add $35 to $50 to the consumers’ final price. Suddenly, for someone like me who uses both Windows and Android on a regular basis, I may just be tempted to go with an Android netbook.
No detailed pricing or availability on Acer’s Android netbooks except that they’ll be here sometime in the third quarter.
[via Reuters]
Still I wouldn’t want to pay an extra $50 for Windows when buying a new laptop. I would rather get the laptop without any OS and install an open source OS. And save $50.
Are we talking android on x86 or on arm netbook platforms here? If android comes out on standard intel atom platform netbooks then there really is no point. Ubuntu netbook remix offers an already built for netbooks interface, plus compatibility with the whole debian ecosystem. If we are talking about arm hardware, than android could be killer, so long as the hardware is attractive, and priced at around $250 or less.
This would be for the Intel Atom CPU, in Acer’s case.
A guy in this article speculates it may support ARM: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aaNxkUvBLWdM&refer=worldwide
“Some guy in a bloomberg story” is more than the minimum for Apple rumors (some kid emailed a picture to me) so I thought I’d pass this on.
This should help drive the price down on some models. Maybe we’ll hit that oh so desired $200 price tag now?
My colleague, Bill Weinberg, just posted a blog on this very topic.
http://linuxpundit.wordpress.com/
Trish