Asus Embarrassed by Linux Netbook?

      by Wyatt Walter

At the Computex trade show, Qualcomm showed off an Asus Eee running Google’s Android OS. We’ve been hearing about Android as a possibility on netbooks for a while now, but haven’t seen a vendor who’s done it until now. Asus should be proud. Instead, Asus chairman Jonney Shih has apologized for the showing, saying:

“Frankly speaking … I would like to apologize that, if you look at Asus booth, we’ve decided not to display this product. I think you may have seen the devices on Qualcomm’s booth but actually, I think this is a company decision so far we would not like to show this device. That’s what I can tell you so far. I would like to apologize for that.”

Why is Asus so scared of showing off a netbook with Android as its base? I’m guessing Microsoft has something to do with it.

So far Linux has been met with very little success on the netbook — just like the desktop. This should be expected as netbooks are suppsed to be just a smaller version of laptops and I would expect that people would prefer the same operating system on both. Why should Microsoft be stiff-arming Asus like this? In a word: Google. Microsoft hasn’t had to play catch up to anyone for nearly as long as they’ve been chasing Google. Obviously, Google has a long ways to go (in fact, they have hardly gone anywhere so far), but Microsoft appears to be a bit nervous and trying to keep its friends in close check.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Jun 3rd, 2009

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