Once again, the idea of Android running on netbooks is starting to gain traction in the blogger community. This time, there's some real meat behind the speculation, as Venture Beat's Matthaus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann actually ported Android to an Asus EEEPC 1000H netbook, leading them to predict that Android-based netbooks will hit the market as early as 2010.
An interesting tidbit of the port was the fact that Android already has two product policies in its code, one for phones, and one for mobile Internet devices (MID), which is Intel's name for devices like the Asus netbook. Add that to the fact that Intel already had all the right drivers for MID chips in place, and it seems likely that Android will make the jump to netbooks fairly soon.
In fact, Krzykowski and Hartmann say their sources estimate that mass production of Android netbooks "would be possible between three and nine months, depending on circumstances." But the two say a more realistic time frame is 2010, since such a move will also require application developers to start developing classic office applications for the OS before such a netbook became practical:
One important part of the ecosystem would be to have a set of well-functioning applications (an office productivity suite, for example). Google is mostly leaving applications development for Android to third parties (applications which run in the browser like Google Docs being the notable exception). At the rate things are going, we don’t see enough of these third parties developing applications for Android netbooks in the next 12 months.
The move makes sense, especially considering the power of combining Android on a netbook with the stability and speed of Google's Chrome browser. It could actually make using a Linux-type netbook as easy as one based on Windows. Let us know what you think -- do Android-based netbooks make sense, and would you use one?
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