Eric Schmidt confirms Chrome OS for 2010

Robert Holland from SocialMediaSEO.net wrote an article about an onstage interview with Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando. Schmidt spoke about Chrome OS too.

Here are the quotes:

“The netbook is arriving – in particular netbooks running Google’s forthcoming Chrome OS, a browser based operating system.”

Ok, not really much new information in this sentence. But with all due respect, Mr. Schmidt, netbooks have already arrived. They’ve been capturing the market for more than one year now.

“Maybe in a year it’ll be possible for procuring a netbook that costs a factor of five or ten times cheaper than what you’re getting today… Chrome OS is due to arrive on netbooks in about a year.”

Hm, when I bought my Acer Aspire One A110L last year for 500 US bucks I already thought it was cheap as hell. Two months later the price dropped to 350. But one tenth?!? If – in one year – it’ll be possible to walk out of a store with a brand new netbook for 35 bucks I’ll eat my hat (have to buy one first, but then I will).

By the way, does anyone know the OEM price for a Windows XP license (please post comment)? I’m pretty sure the hardware is the major cost factor in a netbook. So providing a free OS won’t make netbooks much cheaper. But maybe the ability to use cheaper hardware – namely ARM technology – with Chrome OS will make the difference.

Honestly, the last sentence of Schmidt disappointed me a bit. I was hoping to get my hands on Chrome OS in early 2010. Obviously, it seems to be released rather at the end of 2010.

What do you think of Schmidt’s statements? Feel free to leave a comment below.

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