Following in the footsteps of other consumer electronics device makers, Taiwanese OEM BenQ announced that it will launch a smartphone and netbook running on Google's Android platform in 2010.
BenQ joins a large and growing crowd of companies that plan to make smartphones and netbooks using Android. Samsung, Huawei, LG, Sony Ericsson and others have said that they are working on Android devices. BenQ currently sells netbooks under the brand Joybook Lite using Microsoft Windows XP. It also makes mobile phones using either the Symbian or Linux OS.
In other Android news, Acer said its planned Android netbook will also run Microsoft Windows in a dual-OS design. The company said the move was an effort to hedge its bets against a platform--Android--that remains unproven in the consumer-oriented netbook space.
Meanwhile, HTC remains the sole company with a commercially available Android device in the U.S.--the G1 for T-Mobile USA. Nonetheless, the Android potential remains huge; research firm Strategy Analytics recently said in a release that it expects a 900-percent increase in Android handset shipments in 2009.
For more:
- see this article on BenQ's plans
- see this article on Acer's netbook efforts
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