You are currently viewing SemiWiki as a guest which gives you limited access to the site. To view blog comments and experience other SemiWiki features you must be a registered member. Registration is fast, simple, and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
According to Mark Hibben at Seeking Alpha, the latest version of Android will support windowing and split-screen multitasking. Also a suspicion that Android is being positioned to replace Chrome as part of a Google converged platform strategy. This would put Google in direct competition with Microsoft. Also given Google lean to QCOM and nVidia, it may not bode well for Intel. As I remember, Mark Hibben is a strong Apple apologist, but doesn't see Apple moving this way given their current anti-convergence dogma. Anyone remember how dogma worked out for DEC?
It was Steve Jobs who said rarely can companies manage two large operating systems, and he could not imagine succeeding with three. ("Mobile Unleashed", p. 102 for those interested.)
Last year's Google io event (this year's event coming up, May 18th, Google I/O 2 16, always an interesting watch) hinted that Chrome OS would eventually be subsumed in Android. I do expect them to get more specific next week.
Both are linux based OSes. It's not inconceivable that Google could merge the kernel and simply maintain two separate shells. Such an approach would very much be manageable for Google.
I would really like the Seeking Alpha analyst to be right. I want to plug a phone into a dock that powers a keyboard, mouse, and display of my choosing. That would be a killer app for me. Phones can run Google Docs and versions of Office.
I recently bought a Chromecast, thinking it might be the droid I'm looking for. It is not. It links the phone to the screen though; just not keyboard or mouse/trackpad. There is an element of deliberate omission here. Google is deliberately blocking Android from ever being used like a PC. In Google's current thinking, if you want a keyboard and mouse, you want a Chromebook (which isn't a killer app at all--you can't choose your own keyboard, display and mouse, and the application support for Chrome isn't like Android). So, I hope the analyst is right. But it would be a huge change in Google mindset.
Agreed - innovation through competition in the OS + HMI doesn't seem very productive right now, especially for enterprise-class use models. But not clear that Google has the the keys to that kingdom. Good to see them trying though.
That was almost the Motorola Atrix, a phone running Ubuntu with a "lapdock" that went absolutely nowhere in 2011.
As for the other commenter on "simply maintaining two [Linux] shells", not quite - there are fundamental differences in how apps are loaded between Android (which uses ART) and Chrome OS (which ... doesn't). There is a beta of an App Runtime for Chrome for sideloading Android apps on Chrome OS.
Google has already gotten 10% of the laptop market with chromebooks, but interestingly, most of them are using Intel's celeron and not ARM, even at the low end.
I'm curious whether Intel sells them at a lower than usual margin, and if not , how can they be competitive with ARM ? aren't ARM good enough for low-end laptops ?
