According to the Taiwanese supply chain website DigiTimes, which I know some of you hate, but I tend to dig their rumors, we can expect to see a new 11.6 inch Chromebook from Acer in July. Shortly after that we’ll also see new models from ASUS, Samsung, HP, and Lenovo.
Curiously, DigiTimes also used a word I’ve never heard of before: “Androidbooks”. I’m going to assume that means devices that look like laptops, but run Android. That’s not exactly a new concept, ASUS launched the Transformer brand over two years ago.
Is Google planning on creating a version of Android that’s optimized for this new “AndroidBook” form factor? That’s one thing I know I’ll now be looking forward to hearing at I/O next month. No one really wants to buy a Chromebook because all they do is run Chrome, but if Google made an OS that could actually run native applications, then they might get people’s attention.
Update: Oh and one more thing, there are rumors floating around the internets that say Intel wants to help Android take off, which makes me think this “AndroidBooks” thing isn’t just a translation error, there’s actually something there.