Chrome OS Acer Netbook Coming by Mid 2010?

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2010 has already been a pretty busy year. Looking back, and it’s only February, we’ve seen the Google Nexus One hit stores, the Apple iPad come out of hiding and Nokia’s Symbian^3, Samsung’s bada and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series mobile platforms revealed.

What could we want more from the remainder of the year? Well we expect the iPhone 4G to offer us some of the features we’ve been waiting for from the original iPhone as well as to surprise us with more intriguing tricks. We’re also interested to see how well Project Natal will be able to fight the Wii and the PlayStation. Lots of 3D TVs and a plethora of Android and Windows Mobile 7 handsets should complete our expectations for this year although we wouldn’t mind to be surprised by other smart gadgets and devices out there.

There’s one more detail I haven’t shared yet since I’m about to focus more on it and that’s Google Chrome OS. Unveiled last year, the new OS is expected to equip netbooks by the end of the year. Or at least it was expected to arrive by the holiday seasons since now we hear that Acer is willing to launch a Chrome OS-powered netbook by the middle of 2010. The company didn’t offer any official details of such a computer yet, but such a venture sounds more than interesting already.

Acer is fighting for territory in the netbook business, a market that it dominated last year. With 9 million netbooks sold compared to Asus, Samsung and HP which sold 5.4, 4.2 and 2.9 million units respectively, Acer managed to beat everyone when it comes to netbook making and selling. But 2010 doesn’t look that good so the company needs a brand new product to impress.

While its main competitors are expected to sell 8, 7-8 and 6 million netbooks, respectively, this year, thus aggressively increasing their market share, Acer is expecting “a slight growth” or a “flat performance” compared to 2009 so a Chrome OS-based netbook could be a game changer, especially if launched by the middle of 2010.

We’ll be waiting for Acer to confirm everything before we get excited about the first official, Chrome OS-running netbook. And if these sources are to be believed Acer expects to sell one million Chrome OS netbooks this year alone so there will be plenty of them for everyone interested in cloud-based computing.