Although we recently heard tell of a touchscreen-based test platform called Seaboard running Chrome OS, Google isn’t in a hurry to acknowledge that its browser OS is coming to tablets. I can’t blame them, either — with Android numbers increasing and Chrome OS unproven, it’d be foolish to dilute the market with a second tablet ecosystem. So they’re officially limiting it to Chromebooks for now.
Speaking at Computex in Taipei, Google’s Sundar Pichai said:
Chrome OS is a computer model designed with various form factors in mind, but we are entirely focused on the notebook form factor for now. We have no other plans at this time.
The touchscreen testbed seems to contradict that statement, but at a big company like Google they’re definitely thinking and testing months and years ahead of time, so “no other plans” really just means “plans could change.”
Once they roll out Chrome OS in earnest, though, I think we’ll see an understandable divide between it and Android. It’ll take a while and both products continue to evolve, though, so let’s just wait and see.
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