The blogo-/twitter-sphere was briefly alit last week when this article came out on TechCrunch.
I think the simplest explanation is probably the correct one in this case: Google is working on a 3G/Broadband connection manager for Chrome OS and they working with Verizon to validate it on the Verizon network.
The bigger question though, in my mind, is what kind of device will Chrome OS appear on?
Android, Google’s “other” OS, is coming along strong and is poised to overtake Apple’s iOS in terms of shipment volume. Android is no longer limited to smartphones. It will be shipping on everything from music/media players to tablets from Samsung and Motorola.
How will Chrome OS fit in this picture?
One possibility is that Chrome OS will ship on regular PCs as a companion OS to Windows. A well known example of such an approach (and I would say the “pioneer” in this space) is DeviceVM’s Splashtop. This alternate OS environment ships on notebooks from HP, Lenovo, Dell etc and allows the user to get onto the Internet within seconds of powering up his PC, without having to boot up Windows.
However, this approach is not game changing. DeviceVM is already shipping such a solution.
What is will be game changing however, is to leverage the lightweight nature of Chrome OS and ship it on inexpensive hardware. Conceivably, we would be talking about sub-$200 netbooks/tablets with Chrome OS as the sole operating system. An old blog article from ARM.com alludes to this approach.
In other words, Chrome OS will not be Android’s “big brother”, but it will be the lightweight, single-purpose younger brother. If you want an all-in-one multi-purpose mobile device, get one with Android. If you want an inexpensive bring-you-to-the Internet device with a great web browsing experience, get one with Chrome OS.
This makes sense in a way. The Android web browser today, for example, is really quite limited. Firstly, by the small screen size and low screen resolution of the devices it appears on. Secondly, popular Chrome browser features like bookmarks sync, extensions are not (yet) available for it.
A somewhat single-purpose device still makes sense if they are low-cost enough. We have seen that Amazon’s Kindle continues to sell strongly in spite of the iPad.
What is Verizon’s role in this scenario?
Verizon has been selling 3G/broadband-capable notebooks and netbooks. A natural extension to this product portfolio will be an Internet tablet.
The business model can also get interesting here. For example, the consumer gets a Chrome OS tablet for free when she signs up for a 2-year data plan. Google and Verizon monetize from both the subscription and ad revenue that result from the use of Google services and web properties.
Update (11am PDT): Just saw this on Engadget: Chrome OS tablet coming from Google and Verizon on Black Friday?
Update (5pm PDT): Looks like the Engadget article is all speculation. The link above has been updated. The source of this speculation, Lee Matthews, probably read someone’s blog about Chrome OS (ahem…cough) and added more sauce to the mix…
Disclaimer: I am a Senior Director, Program Management at DevicevM. I wrote this article to express my personal views.