ARM-based netbooks set to arrive on US shores by year end

New rumors peg the long-awaited arrival of ARM-based netbooks, often called “smartbooks,” for the final quarter of this year. They probably won’t dethrone Atom, but they will give the platform a taste of what it did to the laptop.

DigiTimes has been making the rounds of the Taiwanese OEMs, and the company claims to have the scoop on a coming wave of ARM-based netbooks, often called “smartbooks,” that will wash ashore in the US in the last quarter of this year. Smartbooks based on Qualcomm’s SnapDragon processor and NVIDIA’s Tegra line are allegedly on deck from netbook names like ASUS, Acer, and Foxconn. Lesser-known Chinese netbook maker Compal, which was showing off products at this past CES but which doesn’t yet ship to the US, is also named as an ARM netbook maker, as are Inventec and Mobinnova.

Read more: arstechnica.com