Another Samsung Chrome OS Post: Yeah Blah Blah
Posted on 17. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Features, News
So Samsung is working on a Chrome OS product. What a shock. Although maybe in a dry news cycle there is an appetite for anything related to Chrome OS, that unfortunately doesn’t really strike me as news. Maybe I’m cynical, maybe I’m a realist (I could also be dumb, you could comment upon that if you want). The truth is that there are probably a whole slew of manufacturers that want to be the first that gets into the genre of Google’s cloud computing platform. But in being realistic that means that the one that offers the most compelling device specs for the initial launch will win.
It would really be no coincidence that Samsung has initialized a partnership with ARM to provide graphics capabilities to their mobile devices, but other sites are not reporting this little nugget of information. Instead of providing specifications for a future netbook, the interest that I have is more about the synergy that Samsung and ARM will create with this partnership.
Sure, its just a press release, but the reality is that Samsung doesn’t need an integrated processing and graphics solution for a television or a mobile phone. It’s to get into the netbook/tablet/smartphone market. And say what you will about them, but their products are pretty good. Mind you, to compete in the soon-crowded cloud operating system market they are going to be dealing with Taiwan companies that have been successful in the netbook market such as Asus and Acer. However, I would not be surprised to see Samsung do some innovative development that puts them ahead of the pack and eventually have a Chrome OS product that is ahead of their competition.
If Samsung is really interested in entering this market and competing on price, then they could do well. Their track record in consumer electronics is pretty good. But HTC, which came out of nowhere, is currently dominating in Android mobile phone sales because they are ambitious and were willing to take risks that traditional mobile phone manufacturers were not willing to do. Is it going to be a consumer electronics company like Samsung that can heed the call for emerging web operating systems? We will see.
