HP considers Google’s Android for its netbooks


1 Apr 2009

What desktop or laptop operating system (OS) options are there without Windows, the Mac OS X or Unix? Well, Google’s Android is apparently ideal and being “studied” by Hewlett-Packard (HP) as a possible choice for its netbooks.

Android, the open-source OS for the G1 smart phone, is designed to be scaled up or down according to the mobile device, a Google spokesperson told InformationWeek.

“This means that anyone can take the Android platform and add code, or download it to create a mobile device without restrictions,” the spokesperson said.

“The Android smart phone platform was designed from the beginning to scale downward to feature phones and upward to MID [mobile Internet devices] and netbook-style devices,” she added.

As for HP, the computer manufacturer said it had not committed to using Android on its netbooks, but was “studying” the OS for its potential application in both the mobile and computer industry.

If Android is suitable for running on all netbooks, then any one computer manufacturer can and may be looking at the possibility of using it, as the OS is open source and can be downloaded and developed at no cost.

Currently, in Europe, HP only uses the Windows XP OS on its netbooks, having dropped Ubuntu Linux back in February.

By Marie Boran