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This page contains visual explorations of how a Chrome OS tablet UI might look in hardware. Some possibilites they explore include:
UI ConceptsVideo Concepts
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Google may have plans to release a Chrome-based, Google-branded smartbook (or netbook) – the legendary Google PC – after getting the Nexus One smartphone out of the way in January 2010.
According to Michael Arrington from Techcrunch, Google has already submitted a request for proposal to a hardware manufacturer – which we believe would be Asus – with a list of “detailed technical specifications”.
The device, Arrington says, ought to be ready for the 2010 holiday season – one year from now – and will be sold directly to the consumers in the US and presumably over here as well.
A 3G connections appears to be the only dead cert specifications at this point in time although we expect it to be an ARM-based model with a 10-inch screen with 16GB flash memory, a keyboard and all the functionality that you would find on the Nexus One. Maybe Google should call it Nexus Two.
Arrington reckons that the device might run on Nvidia’s Tegra Line that currently powers Microsoft’s Zune HD. The Tegra 2 is set to be launched next year and is said to be twice as powerful as the first one, thanks to a dual core configuration.
But knowing Google, it is likely that they might even want to tweak the processor their way as Apple often does with its Intel-based hardware. Unlike Apple however, Google is starting from afresh – without the legacy of the x86 platform – and is unlikely to stick with Intel.
InfoWorld – The netbook promises convenience and capability in a small, lightweight, and generally inexpensive package, and the concept of a smartbook goes even further: a handy-dandy combination of smartphone and notebook. Alas, most netbook offerings come burdened with a full-blown Windows operating system, which runs slowly on performance-limited netbook hardware and saps battery life. And Windows is not exactly smartphone-oriented.
Could Google’s Android come to rescue the netbook and enable the smartbook vision? After all, Android is a fast, lightweight OS, proven in the mobile phone market, with an elegant user interface and application portability. It’s a natural candidate for the OS inside your dream netbook.
[ See what it takes to build the ideal Android smartbook in InfoWorld's slideshow. | Learn the truth about the Chrome OS and the questions around the Android OS. | Discover what makes the perfect laptop in InfoWorld's animated concept. ]
There are signs that Google is preparing for a new generation of netbooks and smartbooks, with its OS at the center — but it’s not so clear which Google OS. Motorola’s Droid smartphone shipped recently based on Android 2.0, which adds interesting netbook-oriented features such as variable screen size. But then last week Google demonstrated its Chrome OS, the core of a future cloud-based Web appliance, slated to ship a year from now, raising questions about whether Android is really appropriate as a netbook OS. Is Android a dessert topping or a furniture polish? Both, according to Google CEO Eric Schmid, who implied at last week’s Chrome OS press conference that the Android and Chrome OSes could merge in the near future.
Even as the Android-Chrome OS relationship plays out, Android-based netbooks have also begun to appear: Acer just shipped its $350 Aspire One D250-1613.
With the market on the verge of defining itself, now is a good time to help manufacturers fine-tune their imminent offerings by laying out the essential features of a future ideal smartbook running some variant of Google’s Android. Although Android is really mostly the Linux OS and WebKit browser foundation under the covers, it sports a novel user interface geared specifically for mobile use. That interface requires specific hardware capabilities, and mobile operation in general demands networking features that aren’t found in most notebooks or even smartphones.
The basic pedigree of any smartbook falls between that of a smartphone and an ordinary notebook. Today that means about a 1.6GHz dual-core CPU, a gigabyte or so of RAM, and around 100GB of disk space. Other aspects focus on usability. Here are InfoWorld’s 10 essential features that any future Google smartbook should encompass, in priority order. Want to see examples of each? Check out our slideshow “What it takes to build the ideal Android smartbook.”
1. Multitouch screen Smartphones such as the iPhone and Palm Pre rely on a multitouch screen interface for almost all of their operations. Although not fully implemented in the Motorola Droid, the Android OS has the same capabilities. The key is that the screen itself be touch-sensitive: As users of Acer’s Aspire Android netbook have reported, a multitouch trackpad is not an adequate substitute. There are just too many times when you have to locate your fingers directly on objects on the screen, and moving a pointer first is just plain ugly. Imagine Tom Cruise trying to operate the “Minority Report” screens with a mouse. A multitouch screen can still be used with a trackpad, so users can keep their hands on the keyboard when they like.
Thinking outside the box, there is no reason a dream smartbook has to follow the clamshell bandwagon. Consider a twist-around touchscreen that lets you turn your smartbook into a netpad, like the Acer Aspire 1420p laptop does. Dreamalicious! Even a detachable, stowable keyboard is no fantasy feature.
2. Android buttons Android smartphones use four dedicated hardware buttons — Home, Menu, Back, and Search — as integral components of the user interface. Android overloads these buttons with multiple functions, depending on whether the button is pressed once quickly, pressed and held (the “long press”), or double-clicked. For example, holding the Home button brings up a list of running applications, similar to typing Alt-Tab on a Windows notebook. Android phone users become intimately familiar with these functions, making them part of their gesture muscle memory. Regardless of whether that’s good or bad, users transitioning between devices had better find Android’s special buttons on any Android smartbook they use — or else they’ll quickly become frustrated.
Do the buttons have to be actual hardware? Not really: Virtual buttons on the trackpad, or even the touch screen itself, could be acceptable substitutes. As a corollary, the device should have hardware audio volume and mute controls, rather than double-duty keyboard buttons, to give users fast access to sound levels. Why? Because phones do, and many Android smartbook users will have Android smartphones. (Remember the outcry when Apple’s first iPod Touch shipped without those physical controls?)
3. Full-sized keyboard Some netbooks take little to inappropriate lengths, as it were, with keyboards that are just slightly smaller than full size: generally about 90 percent as large. Small keyboards are workable when you can operate them with two thumbs, such as on a BlackBerry Bold, but when they’re too large for that, anyone without small hands will likely find themselves typoing rather than typing. The 10 percent size difference is not worth the pain it induces in users. Because Google is about nothing if not usability, any truly dreamy smartbook will have a full-sized keyboard.
While on the subject of keyboards, netbook and smartbook builders of all stripes should consider keyboard noise. Any Google smartbook is going to find itself in quiet settings where continuous click and clack (sorry, Tom and Ray) is not welcome. We’ve sent men to the moon; we can send quiet keyboards to the library.
4. Solid-state drive There’s nothing worse than waking up from a good dream, but that’s what happens when your netbook battery dies. SSDs (solid-state drives) can double battery life, as well as spiff performance by a factor of two or three. And that all-important startup time will always be much shorter when booting from a solid-state device. (That’s why Google’s specs for its Chrome OS-based Net appliances allow SSDs but not hard drives.) Fortunately, solid-state technology is improving apace, making SSDs affordable standard equipment for smartbooks.
Security is a natural concern with any portable computer, so the SSD should be combined with whole-drive encryption technology to give users peace of mind about sensitive data that could fall into the hands of criminals or the TSA. Even though Google envisions storing user data in the cloud, information is necessarily cached on a smartbook’s internal storage — that’s what it’s there for. Bonus points accrue for built-in two-factor authentication using biometrics or plug-in tokens.
5. Ubiquitous networking The “net” in netbook stands for networking, and no self-respecting dream machine can claim the title unless it has the ability to latch onto any modern network. This means 10/100 Ethernet (GigE is a bonus), Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n), 3G, 4G (WiMax or the forthcoming LTE), and Bluetooth.
Each of these networking technologies has its place: Ethernet for the desk, Wi-Fi for meetings, 3G and 4G for the road, and Bluetooth for tethering devices like phones, headsets, and mice. A Google smartbook maker gets extra points for upgradeable networking via plug-in modules, which helps future-proof your investment.
6. Variable-speed graphics Sometimes you want long battery life, sometimes you want to not get killed in Robo Defense. Apple solved this problem nicely by building dual graphics processors into select MacBook Pro notebooks: a reasonably fast processor for utilitarian tasks, and a 2.5X processor for turbocharged performance. You can switch between the processors, trading speed for battery life as needed. Unless Apple has patented this idea, it seems a great feature for a dream-standard smartbook, especially given Google’s penchant for graphic-intensive applications like Google Earth and Street View.
A standard VGA graphics-out port is a given, since you’ll want to use your smartbook as a presentation tool (although that may require running Windows — horrors! — in place of Android).
7. Integrated microphone, camera, and audio I/O Cell phone multimedia recording has made its mark on society, bringing eyes and ears to all kinds of public, and less than public, venues. Generally this is a good thing, promoting honesty, particularly in government circles. Google, being the home of YouTube, could not in good conscience support a mobile device without the ability to record video and audio, and upload it to the Web in real time — especially not a device with the “dream” moniker.
8. Built-in accelerometer, GPS, and compass This trio of technologies has ushered in a new wave of genius applications for smartphones: turn-by-turn navigation, augmented virtual reality, and geo-tagged data collection, to name just a few. Google’s wealth of geographic databases makes it a natural adjunct for the virtual surveying capabilities you get by combining these three position-measuring features, and a smartbook’s large screen and keyboard add up to much more convenience for serious geographic information processing compared to a smartphone. Positioning electronics are already mass-produced for the handset market, so they should add little cost to a smartbook.
9. Dual-boot capability Some users will argue that the dual-boot capability should be a much higher priority in this list. We can agree that even casual users occasionally need access to capabilities only Windows can provide, though it does so slowly. Dual-boot is an emergency escape hatch from the necessarily constrained world of pure Google apps, and an essential feature for most people. (Look how Apple’s support of dual Mac OS X/Windows boot revitalized the Mac market a few years back.) Can Android run that critical network management tool you need? How about your VPN client or videoconferencing widget? You’ll think of more.
10. Thin, thin, thin Users already have a small screen-size device in the guise of their smartphone; they’re not really looking to minimize those dimensions in their smartbook. More important for convenient holding and storage is thickness, or the lack thereof. Given that smartphones already have most of the capabilities of a smartbook — sans screen and keyboard — how hard can it be to make a smartbook as thin as a smartphone? Surely the 0.36-inch thinness of Amazon’s Kindle 2 can be achieved in a netbook? Am I dreaming?
What dreams may come Acer’s Android-based Aspire One D250-1613, although deserving kudos as the first Android netbook to market, falls several items short of dream status. It lacks a touch screen (although it does have a multitouch trackpad), full-sized keyboard, Android buttons, and SSD — the four highest-priority items on my list. But its networking is half-baked, with 802.11b/g (missing a/n) and Bluetooth; graphics capabilities are mediocre; and there are no position-sensing devices. The integrated camera and microphone are adequate, but not astounding. The device does support dual-boot, and it ships with Windows XP Home (or Windows 7 at a higher price).
Although other vendors, such as Asus, have Android netbooks in the works, their final hardware configurations haven’t yet been disclosed (or leaked). Some manufacturers, such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, are pushing the use of an ARM processor in place of Intel’s x86 Atom (they call these devices “smartbooks,” but they’re not what I mean by the term; I mean a netbook that includes smartphone capabilities as well). Chipmaker MIPS Technologies is even jumping into the fray by retaining software developer Embedded Alley to port Android to the MIPS processor architecture.
Pundits have made much ado about Google’s seemingly divergent mobile OS projects, pointing out that despite a common Linux substrate, the graphical interfaces of the Android and Chrome OSes are wildly different. The Chrome OS has no desktop, which is a central feature of Android, as are Android’s widgets and app store. The programming APIs are unique for each platform as well.
Google, for its part, says it will issue mandatory hardware requirements for Chrome OS devices, and presumably these requirements will be more than adequate for Android or any progeny OS issuing from the marriage of Google’s dual OS efforts. Exactly how Google expects to enforce specific hardware specifications for an open source OS isn’t yet clear. Google Chrome OS project members also pointedly note that the Chrome OS is not meant to be a lightweight notebook — in other words, a netbook — but rather a Web appliance with cloud-based storage.
This view is at odds with Eric Schmidt’s implication of an OS merger in the offing. But I believe that merged view is where Google is going. Here’s a hint from Google’s recent press statements: “We’re reaching a perfect storm of converging trends where computers are behaving more like mobile devices, and phones are behaving more like small computers.”
The pieces are coming together for the smartbook revolution. And the recipe for the devices themselves is on these pages. Christmas 2010, anyone?
This article, “Building the Google smartbook dream machine,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments on Google, netbooks, the Chrome OS, and Android at InfoWorld.com.
There is no doubt that today’s gadgets are experiencing a tremendous convergence with smartphones, smartbooks and netbooks being near the middle of that mashup. They’ll never get fully smushed together into 1 device – at least not in the near future – as different situations/preferences demand different hardware and software decisions. But its pretty obvious that both Android OS and Chrome OS are hovering in this converged “on-the-go” internet realm and the idea that they will never overlap is simply ludicrous.
So what does Google say? Speculation only gets you so far and at the recent Chrome OS media event, several attendees asked about the capability of Chrome OS to run Android applications. The Google employees on the panel pretty much refused to answer the question, saying only that Chrome OS would NOT immediately support Android applications and they had no intentions or plans of that at the moment, their first goal is to get a working Chrome Netbook out in the holiday 2010 season.
Company line. There is OBVIOUSLY a more lengthy, detailed conversation that is worthy of discussion but at this event the company held a “first things first” approach, not wanting the media to get ahead of themselves. But Google co-founder Sergey Brin DID have something to say (to CNET) about the Android/Chrome topic AFTER the event claiming they:
“will likely converge over time,”
Holy smokes. Converge… as in… become one? In the following interview, Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaks on the topic of where Android will be in 3 years (16:30 remaining) and how it relates to Chrome OS:
In fact the Chrome OS is a different product and a different target market. One way to think about it is that Android is really targeted towards people who are phone centric… and we all understand what phone-centric means: it’s a mobile device, it has a Wi-Fi connection and you carry it. If it isn’t a phone it’s something like a phone – a tablet or something like that.
The Chrome OS is really targeted at the PC/Netbook-centric user. And that’s somebody who is at a desk, they’ve got a keyboard or something like that, they’ve got a reasonable screen and a they’ve got a good processor.
The uses are different and we don’t think the two completely overlap.
I think Schmidt has the vision outlined perfectly and that “converged” statement made by Sergey Brin can be perceived in an extreme manner. No matter what happens, there will always be a need for a device you can carry in your pocket (smartphone) and a larger device with a bigger screen you can access in a coffee shop or on the couch (netbook). Android serves one unique set of needs while Chrome OS serves another. In some cases these needs overlap and if you think about it, two great examples of these overlaps would be with a Smartbook (netbook with always connected internet) and Android Netbook. I think a better way of explaining how Android and Chrome OS will relate in the coming couple years is “integrate” rather than “converge”.
Converge seems to suggest that the 2 operating systems will become one – which I don’t think will happen any time soon if at all. Integrate is more realistic – Android Applications could be run on Chrome OS, Android Market would be on Chrome OS, Chrome browser would be used on Android, Browser extensions/themes could be run on Android, etc. Keep in mind that I’m merely speculating here – comparing what Sergey Brin said in a side conversation and what Eric Schmidt said in front of television cameras and rationalizing what the future holds based on their statements.
What is your opinion? Will Android and Chrome Converge? Integrate? Stay completely separate?
I’m officially jealous that I can’t go to the Google press event on Thursday where the Chrome OS will be shown. Our GigaOm Network Editor in Chief, Sebastian Rupley, has the invite, so maybe I can convince him to livestream right to my monitor later this week. Why do I have Chrome fever? Three reasons.
First, I live in a web browser for most of my waking hours. I don’t need many of the standard features that a full desktop operating system provides, so it’s essentially just feature-bloat for me. Second, in the past two to three years, I’ve moved over to Google’s services for email, contacts, phone management and more. Lastly, while I expect Google’s Chrome OS to run on x86 devices, I’m really hoping to see it to thrive on the ARM platform. Chrome OS is probably overkill for a netbook or notebook, so I’m thinking it will help kickstart the smartbook platform — a lightweight web-based OS for a power efficient processor for all day browsing.
What are you expecting to see out of Google’s Chrome OS this week?
nVidia continues to accumulate design wins for Tegra, its combined GPU/ARM processor for the handheld device market, with more than 70 design wins signed and preparing to delivery product.
CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made the announcement yesterday during a post-keynote press conference at the GPU Technology Conference, declaring that we can expect a very big Tegra launch/product push in early 2010. He described this launch as a “massive” one but didn’t get into details, other than to say Tegra’s power consumption while idle makes it suitable for mobile phones.
The Tegra chip consists of an ARM processor and GeForce GPU. It is capable of 720p or 1080i high definition video playback while consuming less than one watt of power. So far, it only has two design wins on the market: the Microsoft Zune HD and Samsung M1 portable media players.
Zune has failed to rack up much of a record in its attempts to grab market share from Apple’s ubiquitous iPod, but the recently launched Zune HD has been getting very good reviews. BetaNews called it “the best portable media player you may never buy,” owing to its failure against the iPod.
Reports from Asia also indicate that ODMs are preparing netbooks running Tegra and Google’s ChromeOS, and Mike Rayfield, the senior vice president and general manager of nVidia’s mobile business unit, told mobile computing site jkOnTheRun that nVidia is working with Google to bring Chrome OS to the Tegra.
An nVidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) spokesperson added that the company is also planning to support Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Android and Linux on Tegra, depending on the device and usage model
During his keynote, Huang showed a netbook running an ION processor, a GPU/Atom combination, and compared the performance of HD video playback against a netbook without Tegra. The Tegra device was smooth, with no skipping, while the HD video on the non-Tegra device looked like a slide show.
Dean McCarron, president of Mercury Research, said nVidia has talked about diversifying beyond the graphics card for gamers base that made it rich for some time now, and is doing well with Tegra.
“This is one of the areas where they got some traction. They are just parlaying what they learned with the graphics market, integrating it with a CPU to expand into a bigger market that might have a bigger TAM [Total Available Market] for nVidia,” he told InternetNews.com.
The proof, however, will be in the products, and McCarron figured nVidia hadn’t wanted to miss Christmas — but that’s now likely beyond its control. “Deployment might be going slower. I’m sure they’d rather have 70 design wins going into production in August than in January so they could have that holiday window, but these things take time,” he said.
An NVIDIA executive has confirmed that the company is working with Google to produce Tegra-based Smartbooks running Google Chrome OS. Talking to jkOnTheRun’s Kevin C. Tofel, NVIDIA’s GM of mobile business Mike Rayfield revealed that the company expects to see Tegra-based smartphones using Windows Mobile and Android, while Smartbooks or netbooks would use Chrome OS or Windows CE.
These OSes, Rayfield, suggests, would make the most of Tegra’s frugal power requirements. The chipset can play back video content with power draw of 1W or less, while an Atom CPU, he claims, would require several times that. Nonetheless, Tegra is capable of high-definition playback, and NVIDIA believe that in combination with the surge in internet-based apps, consumers will happily give up “dehydrated laptops” running traditional Windows desktop OSes and instead choose longer runtimes, broader connectivity and increased HD performance from Tegra Smartbooks.
Meanwhile, Mobinnova have apparently confirmed that their Smartbook, presumably the Foxconn-manufacturered Mobinnova Elan, has been ordered by various carriers in Europe and North America, and will reach the market by the end of the year. Another machine, produced by Compal, will also apparently go on sale before 2009 is out.
The pieces have fallen into place. It’s all about to finally happen: A new OS, installed on a new form factor, running on a brand new platform. According to our reliable sources on the Mainland, both Lenovo and Acer are planing to launch Tegra-based devices running Google’s Chrome OS, and the word on the streets is that it could even happen sometime later this month. So far there’s no concrete indication whether or not these devices will fall neatly in to the emerging smartbook category, although that certainly seems to be the most likely scenario.
Whether or not these devices will be the first true smartbook products remains to be seen, although it would seem to make sense. At least to me it does. I mean…Why push Google Chrome OS on a MID that would probably be fairly happy with Android, especially if Google wants the world to see its new Chrome OS in all its glory?
Nvidia’s Tegra is due to make an appearance sometime soon according to reports, and at least seems to have landed a regular gig with Microsoft’s Zune. So it perhaps makes sense that in the same week we find pics of Google’s first true OS we also hear that two major OEMs, who are Google Chrome OS compatriots, are ready to pounce with devices that combine them both.
These are the Google Chrome OS images that have surfaced recently.
You’ll notice Lenovo and Acer featured here in this image showing Google’s partners.
But where does this leave the gruesome twosome who have dominated this industry for decades? The Wintel duopoly will have no doubt been watching very carefully, scheming and hatching a counter-offensive of their own. Will the Shanzai care? They’ve been using ARM processors for years in cell phones and smart phones and (unlike most Taiwanese manufacturers) they have no loyalty or affinity to a specific platform or OS. If the consumer wants ARM-based smartbooks running a free Chrome OS, then that is what they’ll have. By mid-2010 we’ll have them in a myriad of designs and colors. Perhaps even sooner.
The future of netbooks and mobile devices is even more exciting than recent developments, claimed Bob Morris, director of Mobile Computing, as he outlined what ARM can do for our devices.
How about slimmer, lighter netbooks without losing that battery life? “8 hours from a 2-cell battery”, Morris detailed as he whipped out a Pegatron-built engineering sample.
Running Ubuntu, the 9-inch sample model was super slim, light in weight, but still sported all the connectivity you’d expect and with an expected price-point of somewhere around the $200 mark, designed to be “an impulse buy”.
Morris’ vision stretched much further than samples that just shave down what we already have today. Imagine having your netbook always talking to your 3G connection, even when in “standby”, so as soon as you open it up, it has all your email there. Without the need to “connect” to the Internet as we currently do, you can get to work or leisure without the customary delay.
Arguably you could set-up your netbook to do this now, but you’d still be drawing heavily on the battery. Morris pointed to the growth in demand for more sophisticated smartphones and the relatively easy crossover between a phone and a mobile computing device. After all, we enjoy our phones with an always on connection, why not larger mobile devices, why not on “smartbooks”?
He also flashed an ARM nettop, pictured below, designed to replace the desktop computer, competing with Intel’s Atom nettop boxes which we’ve already seen appearing. Again, it’s only a sample, but it shows the direction things are heading, and Morris said this type of nettop could be available for around $150.
Perhaps the most tantalising idea of all is doing away with the concept of a “computer” in the traditional sense. You have a single ARM-based device that provides all your computing power. It’s your phone in your pocket on the move, and when you arrive at your office or home, you put it on your desk, it connects to your display and keyboard and it’s a desktop computer.
Morris tipped Google’s Chrome OS as part of this equation providing a slick route to cloud computing for consumers, but also pointed out the cloud computing moves from Microsoft’s end too.
Interesting ideas, but we’ll await to see what the reality is, with new ARM devices arriving mid-September this year and again at CES in January 2010.
Opinion by Rob Enderle
Microsoft may be a little unnerved about Google’s Chrome — the smartbook platform may spur real transformation in the PC space. Still, whether Google will reap the rewards of its innovation is questionable. It doesn’t seem to know what it needs to do to from a marketing perspective to really execute on Chrome’s promise.
You betcha. OK, I’m just kidding — but in most markets that are divided like the PC market, where one vendor has 90 percent and the other 10 percent, a well-funded competitor would likely take out the 10 percent vendor on the way to taking on the 90 percent vendor.
However, as I look at this, I think Chrome will cause both Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Apple Store Discount on Office 2008 for Mac – Home and Student Edition . Click here. More about Apple and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) More about Microsoft to think twice about some things, but I don’t see that it represents much of a competitive risk to Apple, in fact, I’m no longer convinced the Android phone is much of a risk to the iPhone anymore, and I’ll explain why.
I’ll end with my product of the week: a fantastic little video-editing application called “vReveal” that works with Nvidia graphics cards to take cellphone videos and clean them up for your family or for sharing on YouTube More about YouTube.
Chrome, or How to Scare the Crap Out of Microsoft
Let me be clear: Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) More about Google isn’t going after Apple. It is going after Microsoft, and Chrome is crafted to attack Microsoft where it is currently weakest — on the browser and desktop OS. Facing what appears to be an ugly migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 and an increased focus by users on Web — rather than desktop — applications, users are shifting their interest to new things. Apple has been, to date, the biggest beneficiary.
However, this is where you would expect the risk to reside, because Google’s attack should be very attractive to the same audience Apple was convincing to switch platforms. Some recent converts might be made to switch back — but if successful, Google more likely would capture the lion’s share of new Windows displacement opportunity. That’s because its offering targets that opportunity better than Apple’s currently does. And that’s because Apple has to focus on keeping its installed base happy, while Google can focus 100 percent on kicking Microsoft’s butt.
Apple’s Armor
Google’s focus is on the very low end of the market — what you might think of as the Honda Element class of company. Apple is at the other end of the segment — more like the Acura crowd. This doesn’t mean that premium vendors can’t emerge using the Chrome OS, but the offerings initially will be high value. Apple’s, on the other hand, tend to focus more on high quality and premium services, and they come at higher prices.
Premium quality will be emphasized by some of the anticipated advancements in new iPhone offerings.
In addition, just like Google is taking its Android platform and effectively scaling it up for Chrome, Apple could take the iPhone platform and scale it up to create its own competing platform that could be even more compelling. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me, given how cross-pollinated these two companies are at the board level, if Apple and Google had somehow agreed to carve up the available market with their two offerings. The two companies’ products seem to be relatively noncompetitive, given their clear similarities.
In the end, it simply doesn’t look as though this effort from Google is that much of a threat to Apple — but what about the change it anticipates?
Chrome: The Core Risk
Both the Mac OS and Windows are based on the semi-connected world that existed from the beginning of the PC to this decade. Most this decade, though, represents a major shift in behavior — from splitting time between PCs and TVS to spending most of our time on the Web and on smartphones. We are increasingly pulling our TV programs and movies down from the Web, living on applications like Twitter More about Twitter (I’m @enderle) and Facebook More about Facebook, and with new offerings like OnLive, which brings high-performance gaming to devices like this smartbook platform Google is trying to launch.
This suggests the era of platforms like the traditional Mac OS and Windows may be ending soon, to be replaced by products more similar to Palm’s (Nasdaq: PALM) More about Palm webOS, the iPhone version of the Mac OS, the RIM OS and the Chrome OS. Disruption can be a real problem for the vendors who dominate a segment, and this would indicate a risk that Apple would share with Microsoft.
Can Google Execute?
Google is all over the place right now. It has Gmail, Google Apps, its smart grid project, its book-indexing project, Android, Chrome and its public cloud. It has Google Voice and its massive mapping efforts. It’s pissing off companies that range from Rupert Murdoch’s media properties to AT&T (NYSE: T) More about AT&T, and there is such a thing as fighting on way too many fronts at once. I’m far from the only one who thinks Google is spreading itself way too thin.
In addition, Google seems to have trouble finishing things. Offerings either appear to be in perpetual beta or feel like they’re in perpetual beta. Google seems to jump from major project to major project more often than some of us change clothes. In short, it has a real focus problem.
Also, if you look at the smartphone space, which is likely more similar to these smartbooks that will run Google Chrome, you see that it is currently dominated by three vendors in terms of mindshare. They are Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) More about Research In Motion, Apple, and Palm — all of which are vertically integrated. I think this is because when you add the required wireless carrier (cellphone company), the question of who owns the customer and the customer experience becomes too difficult to answer if you have separate hardware, software and network providers.
In the case of Apple, RIM and Palm, they own the customer, the responsibility for marketing Grow Your Business-Fast! Sign up for a FREE trial of Infusionsoft and double your sales in 12 months. the product, and product execution. I think that is why they are doing so well, while Symbian, Windows Mobile and LiMo simply haven’t been as interesting. In short, this new market may be better suited to Apple’s model than the Microsoft model that Google is copying.
Finally, despite the fact that Google probably controls more marketing dollars than any other vendor, it hasn’t demonstrated an ability to actually do marketing. This is one of the reasons Bing’s move is so successful against Google Search. It’s a marketing-driven attack by Microsoft using an Apple-like model, and Google can’t figure out how to respond. If Microsoft can toast Google with an Apple-like attack, think what Apple could do.
Wrapping Up
The risk to Apple that Google and Chrome represent has more to do with the changing conditions that are driving the Chrome platform. My guess is that its launch will likely speed up plans to take the iPhone UI into the Mac space and create a tighter coupling of Apple phone and PC offerings than otherwise might have happened. Otherwise, I actually think Apple is likely in better shape to weather this storm than Microsoft is at the moment.
The good news for both companies is that it doesn’t look as though Google fully understands what it will take to succeed in this space. That means this move may be riskier for Google than it is for either Microsoft or Apple, unless Google focuses, builds up marketing competency, and executes better than it currently is. In short, like Netscape, Google may have instigated one of the biggest changes since the beginning of the PC, but it might be unable to capitalize on it.
Product of the Week
I’m kind of fascinated about the entire concept of using a graphics processor to do real work. It amazes me how much faster these things are when it comes to processing video content. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that a part designed to render graphics could be great at improving or transcoding a graphics file. It just seems kind of like magic when it works.
vReveal can take a really lousy cellphone-quality video and — while it doesn’t turn it into HD — make it clear enough to enjoy. It is easy to use, and at US$49, it isn’t very expensive, and the end product is surprisingly good. What’s fascinating is that it even worked on my Atom-based Rivo Aspire mini-desktop with Nvidia Ion graphics, which is a truly low-end product. The only catch is you need a graphics component that supports Nvidia Cuda, which means it needs to be relatively new. If you’re in doubt, you can download the free trial and see if it works.
Easy, inexpensive, and it does a nice job — that makes vReveal ideal for my product of the week.
