Google already sells a line of smartphones and tablets through the Google Play Store. While technically these devices are made by Samsung, Asus, and LG, they’re sold under the Google name.

According to the China Times, Google could be preparing to do the same thing with an upcoming Chromebook.

Chromebooks

Chromebooks are basically laptops that run Google Chrome OS instead of Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, or other operating systems. In other words, they boot and shut down quickly and feature an operating system designed primarily around a web browser.

Up until now, Google has partnered with Samsung and Acer to release Chromebooks, with prices ranging from $200 to $550. While they’re listed in the Play Store, these laptops are actually sold through retailers such as Amazon and Best Buy.

But the China Times report suggests Google could work with Taiwanese equipment maker Compal to produce a Chromebook that would be a pure Google device, from head to toe.

That would allow Google to have even more control over the hardware, price, and physical design than it does over the latest Chromebooks.

China Times suggests that the Chromebook could have a touchscreen, which makes sense since the Chrome browser can run on the touch-friendly Android operating system as well as Windows, OS X, Linux, and Chrome OS.

That’s about it for the hardware specs revealed in the report though. There’s no information about the processor, storage, or other features.

Chrome OS can run on a range of chips including ARM-based processors and Intel or AMD chips with x86 architecture. While most Chromebooks to date have shipped with 16GB of flash storage, Acer’s latest Chromebook has a 320GB hard drive, so there’s no telling what kind of hardware a Google-branded Chromebook might feature.

via TechCrunch

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

6 replies on “Is a Google-branded Chromebook with a touchscreen in the works?”

  1. I for one welcome our Android / Chrome overlords. Honestly I think with a nice new ARM processor and a touchscreen I will finally buy into the Chromebook model especially if I can dual boot the Android OS (linux is also a drawcard) or run its apps.

  2. Id been weighing up ordering a Samsung Chromebook for ages. I read dozens of reviews and this one was great https://search4reviews.net/ , I got my order last week and am very happy. I Would highly recommend to anyone still unsure:

  3. What’s next? A ChromeOS tablet? A phone? What’s Google’s plan here?

  4. Gregg has an interesting point. I think it will take awhile, but this whole concept of having an app on a device (it’s essentially a program) will go away. As HTML5 and JavaScript show more and more signs of being able to run full on applications in a browser……why have all these individual programs installed on your devices? Only to have to always be updating them all the time. I think my Android phone gets a minimum of 2 updates a day………and sometimes more. Web apps never need to be updated on the client. I see Chrome as being the future. I thought it would end up this way long before the Chrome OS was even talked about. It just makes more sense to move the complexity to the web and have light weight clients (literally and figuratively) be……well……less complex.

  5. Fairly soon all devices will have touch screens, regardless of size. It will no longer make sense to have a different OS for different sized devices. The single OS will be responsive to the display size. Google will soon have to decide on its brand. Will it be Android or Chrome OS? I think the Android brand will disappear, and everything will be Chrome.

Comments are closed.