Engadget is reporting that mobile software company Bsquare issued a press release saying it was providing software for Dell netbooks running Google’s Android OS. It’s hard to see how a company could do so unless it was, indeed, working with Dell on such products. But Dell hasn’t said anything about Android, and I’m not seeing the press release Engadget republished on Bsquare’s site.
One way or another, it’ll be fascinating to see if Android (or other contenders, like Palm’s WebOS) does end up on netbooks, and if so, whether it finds success. It isn’t every day that a new consumer client OS arrives and finds success–in 2009 as in 1984, the major players are Microsoft and Apple, and other players are tiny potatoes when it comes to market share (sorry, Linux, I love you just the same). But with more and more of everyday computing happening in the browser, it’s never been more plausible that a new OS might make sense and gain traction. Although it’s still not entirely clear to me why Android would be a more compelling netbook OS than something like Ubuntu already is…