Google is for the software market what Apple is for the computer hardware market. More or less everything it touches is turned into gold and now when Google is working on its very first operating system, there’s a lot of high expectations. But Google Chrome OS might get a rough start as analysts has examined the search engine giants hardware demands. Even if the operating system itself is free and based on open source code, building a Chrome OS compatible computer is an entirely different matter when it comes to costs.
As we’ve reported before, the hardware specifications are pretty tough for the future Google Chrome OS compatible computers. But now there’s a chance that the somewhat extreme specifications might add to the difficulty in bringing a computer to the market, as costs will be too high for the hardware itself.
“PC OEMs say the hardware requirements—still under NDA–will make the systems actually more expensive than a Windows device, yet they don’t have anywhere near the applications support”, said analytist Bob O’Donnel from IDC
O’Donnel means that the netbook market otherwise will continue to grow during 2011, estimating some 45 million netbooks to be sold, in comparison to the smartbook market which is estimated at 2 million sold devices.
Another possible problem would be the fact that Google Chrome OS needs the smartbook to be constantly online. This isn’t exactly a smooth solution and a major one being traveling abroad, where the data traffic might generate enormous bills for the customer. This is hopefully something that Google will get help fixing.
Source: Eetimes
