Computing Industry Turns Away from Windows

Asus, Acer, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung are all making Chromebooks this year.

Samsung makes Chromeboxes. [Think ChromeOS on a Mac-mini.]

All five are shipping Android tablets already.

AMD wants to get into Android and Chrome. Literally.

Now new classes of Android devices are starting to show up:


Acer all-in-one will run Android
Some complain about this all-in-one having too small a processor... it is true that it would not fill traditional all-in-one needs with that processor, but imagine having one on the wall in your house as a smart message board! (It's $400). Don't worry, full-fledged all-in-ones will be available too.

(The hybrids below are new in that they are now powered by chips that run at laptop speeds.)
ASUS: New Transformer Pad Infinity: Tegra 4, 2,560 x 1,600 display

HP's Android-powered SlateBook x2 is a Transformer series competitor

All five of the traditional PC OEMs are expected to have some form of Android laptop and all-in-one soon.

Why are these entities so excited? Well, if you don't know about Chrome Packaged Apps, start here.

Basically these apps will run on ChromeOS, Android, Windows, Linux, MacOS and eventually iOS.

Your next laptop/desktop may run ChromeOS or Android

(and you'll like it!)

But it is likely the news out soon will be even more exciting. For example it is known that Google is working on an Office Suite that will run on all these platforms. Unlike Google Docs, this suite will easily work offline and be much more like a traditional Office Suite, but automatically syncs such that your work is available everywhere and that you start work on the next device where you left off on the previous device. Others can use this same mechanism to make their own suites.

It is know that a big announcement will occur in July (probably the roll out of the Android and possibly the iOS developer SDK support for Chrome Packaged Apps).

My guess is that we'll be hearing tons of announcements all through the Summer: new Chrome and Android hardware, new Chrome Packaged Apps and keyboard / mouse optimized versions of Android apps.

I am also predicting that in the Holiday Season we'll see more Android and Chrome Tablets/Laptops/Desktops than Windows Tablets/Laptops/Desktops in stores like Best Buy.