Google CEO: Chrome OS devices to cost $300-$400, same as netbooks
April 20, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chief Executive, has been speaking about its upcoming Chrome OS at the Atmosphere Cloud Computing forum and let rip some previously unknown details regarding pricing. He says that price points should be similar to that of current netbooks and also hopes for Chrome OS devices to be bundled by mobile phone operators.
“It will be up to the manufacturers who do it, but the price points you should think about are the current netbook pricings which are 300 dollar, 400 dollar price points,” said Schmidt. “Those prices are completely determined, by the way, by the costs of the glass, the costs of the processor and things like that, but in our case Chrome OS and Android are free so there is no software tax associated with all of this.”
Chrome OS is set to launch during the second half of 2010, with devices expected to arrive by the end of the year. It will bring a cloud focused OS to the mainstream and there has even been rumours of Google releasing its own Chrome OS netbook with high-end hardware specifications (SSD, multitouch displays etc).
Schmidt is certainly confident of its success and believes it could transform the market. “If you think about it there’s not been a new successful platform in this space for 20 years, and I’ve had a few failures along the way. If there’s anyone who understands how hard this stuff is then it’s me personally and the team we’ve assembled is very good. If you go back to what we are trying to do we are trying to develop a new set of platforms.”
Via TechRadar.
May 1st, 2010 12:50 AM
How much does a Windows license cost? It’ll be cool to see what putting that money towards hardware instead of the OS will get you. Probably just the SSD instead of a slow spinning disk drive.