An Acer tablet could be on its way to join the raft of other slates expected this year, but this might not be any old Windows MID: a top Acer exec has hinted it might just run Google Chrome OS.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Acer’s chairman JT Wang confirmed that the company is “developing something” when asked about the potential of the rumoured Apple tablet, expected to debut this Wednesday.
that the world’s second biggest PC manufacturer is jumping on the tablet bandwagon should be no surprise, but Wang also let slip what OS it might run. “We will see what happens… We’re going to work either in the Windows world or in Google’s defined OS space,”.
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That could be Android of course, but given the poor critical reception Acer’s first Android netbook received, we reckon Wang might just have been talking about Google’s incoming desktop operating system, Chrome OS.
As if to prove a point, the same report quotes Acer IT president Jim Wong’s bold promise to deliver Chrome OS to customers first, with an Acer Chrome OS netbook scheduled for Q3 this year. “For Chrome, we’re aggressively pursuing to become one of the first, so there’s a change to the Microsoft-Intel environment,” he said.
Of course, Apple’s tablet could completely change our approach to slate computing and leave Acer, Asus, HP and co in its tracks, but if anything can combat that, we’d say it was Google Chrome OS and its reliance on the cloud. Bring on the 2010 tablet wars.
