Acer working on several Android devices

IDG News Service - Acer Inc. is already working on several different devices using Google Iinc.'s Android operating system and software, and it plans to launch a smartphone using the software later this year.

"The entire industry is looking at Android," said Acer president and CEO Gianfranco Lanci at the company's first-quarter investor's conference in Taipei today.

"We are testing Android on a lot of different solutions," he said. "We are working on an Android solution for the smartphone, [but] I think it's too early to say if we're going to see Android on a netbook in the near future."

Lanci said Android is "very, very good for communication and Web access and so on," but he's not sure yet if it's right for traditional PCs.

A smartphone with Android makes a lot more sense than a netbook with the operating system, he said.

Google's Android software has become a popular topic because of its success so far in smartphones.

T-Mobile USA, the first mobile network operator globally to launch an Android handset, the G1, has sold 1 million of the smartphones in the first six months since it went on the market.

Although that's far less than the number of iPhones Apple sold in its first two quarters on the market, it's still a big start for a brand-new operating system.

Several more Android smartphones have been announced recently, including a few more from the G1's developer, High Tech Computer (HTC), the first one from Samsung Electronics, and two for Far EasTone, a Taipei-based mobile network operator.

Netbooks are a new frontier for Android.

Hewlett-Packard Co. earlier this year confirmed rumors that it had been testing Android on netbooks, and China-based Guangzhou Skytone Transmission Technologies Co. said its Android netbook is undergoing final testing before it launches.

Developed by Google, Android is a smartphone operating system that is meant to make Web browsing easy, especially on Google sites such as YouTube and Google Maps. The majority of netbooks today use Microsoft's Windows XP operating system.