Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Android May Not Just be For Mobiles?

Whilst much focus is on Google’s content grab they continue to move forward on other fronts. Last week, VentureBeat’s Matthäus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann loaded Google’s Android operating system onto an EeePC10000H netbook. This not only proved the concept but when loaded Android was able to use the onboard graphics, sound, and wireless capabilities of the netbook.

Last month the system was ported to Nokia N810. So while Android is a new mobile operating system it now appears that it is capable on running on many PCs, laptops and netbooks. Although Android is developed on Linux it does not use Linux X Server graphic drivers, which means that standard Linux applications that use the X Server, must be first be ported to the Android system in order to work. However most Linux drivers are reported to work under Android so the port to netbooks is relatively easy.

So where is this all going? Tech Republic suggests that the combination of Chrome, Android and Google Desktop could result is a full operating system push, ZDNet speculate that Google could effectively create new revenues from selling Android application on PCs.

We can’t say where this will go but with more Linux based devices it looks probable that Google is aiming for a bigger slice of the market than just mobiles.

No comments: