Google teases Android PC, sparking industry speculation

Google has dropped a hint pointing to its plans of building an Android-powered personal computer (PC) in a bid to unite its operating systems together.

Google’s SVP of Devices and Services Rick Osterloh gave the hint at the Snapdragon Summit kickoff on 24 September during a live discussion with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.

If true, the company may be close to launching the first PC that runs on Android and not ChromeOS which Google has used for a long time.

Bridging the gap between

Google has maintained different operating systems for different devices — ChromeOS for laptops and tablets, and Android for phones.

However, those days are about to be a thing of the past. Osterloh said during the discussion that:

“In the past, we’ve always had very different systems between what we are building on PCs and what we are building on smartphones. We’ve embarked on a project to combine that. We are building together a common technical foundation for our products on PCs and desktop computing systems.”

By bringing Android to PCs, Google also intends to bring all its phone-based AI features to computers. This is not the first time that the company has hinted on the proposal. 

A Google exec Sameer Samat explicitly confirmed earlier this year that the company is combining Chrome OS and Android, which seems to be what Osterloh is talking about.

“This is another way we can leverage all of the great work we’re doing together on our AI stack, our full stack, bringing Gemini models, bringing the assistant, bringing all of our applications and developer community into the PC domain. And I think this is another way in which Android is gonna be able to serve everyone in every computing category.”

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon has confirmed seeing the plan, saying it delivers the vision of combining mobile and PC.

Meanwhile, there has been speculation about the Android PC by Google since last year, which seems to be finally coming true, although there are no details yet.