Acer plans to add Android to the Aspire One

Offering Google's mobile phone operating system on its netbooks will give users more choice and could give Acer a marketing advantage

At the Computex 2009 trade show in Taiwan, Acer said it planned to ship most versions of its Aspire One netbook with a version of Google's Linux-based Android operating system, used on mobile phones such as the G-1. "The Android operating system will provide Acer netbook users with faster connection to the Internet, further enhancing efficiency on-the-go," said the company. It would be available in Q3 2009.

The introduction of Android into Acer netbooks presents customers with another choice of operating system. In addition to Microsoft's operating system, the majority of Acer netbooks will also offer Android in the future. Users may then select their preferred choice of operating system. Acer believes the Android operating system will contribute significantly to the worldwide netbook market growth.

One of the benefits -- and drawbacks -- of Android is that it's open source so suppliers can customise it. One of the reasons Linux failed on netbooks was that the leading suppliers offered their own versions instead of uniting behind a common platform. It remains to be seen whether the netbook market will end up with different versions of Android, and how different they will be.

However, shipping both Windows and Android on most Aspire One netbooks will remove the high cost of having separate stock-keeping units (SKUs) for Windows and Linux. It won't cost Acer anything to include it, and it should still benefit netbook buyers if they have a choice of operating system -- always assuming it's done as some sort of dual-boot system where you can switch between them. (Just offering users the option to delete Android during the first configuration makes no sense at all. They'll already have paid for Windows.)

It remains to be seen how many Aspire One buyers might actually use Android because, in Q3, Acer will presumably start shipping netbooks running Windows 7. Even the Starter version (which no longer has the threatened limit of only being able to run three apps at once) looks better than Android. But it might give Acer a selling point against rival netbooks that don't include something similar.