Startup Shows Android Running on a Netbook

Android on a netbook? This isn't something that should be much of a surprise. Google has always labeled Android as a platform, and not simply a smartphone OS. Matthäus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann, freelancers for Venture Beat, who also run a startup called Mobile-facts, have managed to get Android compiled and up-and-running on an Asus Eee PC 1000H.

While this is not Asus or MSI announcing Android on a netbook, which would be far more exciting (rather than an experiment), the two did note a few things that point to an upcoming Android-based netbook, they say by 2010.

For one, we discovered that Android already has two product “policies” in its code. Product policies are operating system directions aimed at specific uses. The two policies are for 1) phones and 2) mobile internet devices, or MID for short. MID is Intel’s name for ‘mobile internet devices,’ which include devices like the Asus netbook we got Android running on.

Another indicator for a coming Android netbook is that Intel already had the right drivers for MID chips in place.

Obviously, adoption of Android as netbook platform would be quite the money-maker for Google. Also quite obviously, it's not something coming out tomorrow, and it isn't something Microsoft would be concerned about --- yet.

It is something a forward-looking Microsoft should worry about in the future. Vista doesn't run well on netbooks; XP keeps going and going and going, but won't forever. Windows 7? It's been demo'ed, but it remains to be seen how it will run in real life.

Krzykowski and Hartmann go into more details on their ideas about an Android netbook in a FAQ they posted Friday.