No Windows 7 for ARM smartbooks, but Android "not mature" either

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No Windows 7 for ARM smartbooks, but Android "not mature" either

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 4 June, 2009

Only days after Qualcomm sought to rechristen the netbook category by introducing its 'smartbook' label, Microsoft has decided to go with its own naming convention, 'low cost small notebook PC'. Less snappy than netbook, and the software giant seems to be losing momentum against Linux in other respects too, saying it will not put the upcoming Windows 7 on Linux netbooks, which could leave the field free for platforms such as Android in the emerging MID or smartbook areas.

But Android is not seizing the moment either. At its developer conference in Silicon Valley, Google refused to confirm talk that it had set up a group to work on netbook implementations of Android, or indeed to comment on this product segment at all. Acer did promise to put Android on netbooks as well as smartphones this year, but Asus, which has created an Android model, promptly turned around and said this was, for now, "on the back burner".

Everyone wants a share of the territory that lies between smartphones and PCs, and the big players are hoping to increase their influence by defining the as-yet vague category and what a device's key characteristics should be. The chip giants - Qualcomm, Freescale, Intel, AMD and others - had their say in the first two days of the Computek show in Taiwan, and then the emphasis shifted to the operating system, Windows versus various flavors of Linux (Android, Intel Moblin, Ubuntu and others).

But Microsoft is confining itself to the traditional 'Wintel' axis, saying that Windows was designed for x86 and will not be porting to the ARM core, the basis of the non-Intel/AMD netbook challengers such as Qualcomm Snapdragon. Steve Guggenheimer, head of Microsoft's OEM division, made the statement in a news conference at Computex and said the firm's only Windows variant for ARM processors would be Windows Mobile. "It's hard to create new categories," he said, referring to the MID or smartbook that could slot in below the netbook in power terms, with even greater battery life and a smartphone-style use interface. Perhaps Microsoft got burned by its repeated attempts to promote the tablet format, but Henri Richards, head of sales and marketing at Freescale, told IDG he "couldn't understand" why the Windows firm would not be interested in ARM-based smartbooks.

Meanwhile, a day after delegates saw the Asus Eee PC running Android in Taipei, executives said the project was not for immediate commercial release and stopped displaying the device (which was on the Qualcomm stand). The technology is "not mature", vice chairman Jonathan Tsang told Techworld. "For the time being this project is not a priority because our engineering resources are limited," he added. The Eee prototype was running on Snapdragon with a 10-inch display, and was smaller and lighter than Atom/XP Eee models - the vendor said this was because Snapdragon requires fewer cooling components, such as fans.