A senior Microsoft official has said he is sceptical over suggestions that Android will flourish as a computer operating system, and also cast doubts on British chip-makers ARM's ability to flourish in the netbook market.
Corporate Vice President for Original Equipment Manufacturers (VP for OEM) Steve Guggenheimer told Reuters that he did not believe Android was ready for the PC market yet – suggesting that the open-source and smartphone targeted OS will be hamstrung by a lack of support for peripherals.
"I'm somewhat sceptical that consumers will begin running to Android right now," said Guggenheimer.
"You'll still want your printer to work, you'll still want your software to work.
"There's a lack of a complete ecosystem around Android."
Acer has already unveiled its Android netbook at computex, with rival Asus likely to follow suit soon.
First, do no ARM
Another company hoping to make inroads in the low-powered computer market is ARM – a company that indicated it was seeking 30 per cent of the market in 2010.
Guggenheimer stated that people would not be satisfied with a computer that did not offer PC-like functionality, which some would argue seems to fly in the face of Microsoft's keynote in which it highlighted the importance of 'consumer internet devices'.
"For people who want a PC, albeit a different chipset, we don't think those will work very well," added Guggenheimer.
"We sort of learnt in the last year that if it looks like a PC and acts like a PC, people want the features and benefits of a PC."
TechRadar will be attempting to get a comment from ARM.
