By: Alexandra Arici
This year will certainly prove to be a full year for Chromebooks. Toshiba has just announced its very first offering at CES 2014 and Dell has joined the party not so long ago.
Also expected to make an appearance this year is ASUS, which has been reportedly prepping two Chromebook models as well. And talking to the press at CES, a Lenovo official revealed they too, are planning to spawn the market with “multiple Chromebook offerings” in 2014.
HP has already some models on the market, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t looking to refresh its line. New information reported by Reuters allows us to take a sneak peek into HP’s plans concerning Chromebooks.
Apparently, Hewlett Packard has teamed up with Israel’s Altair, a manufacturer of fourth-generation chips for (4G) mobile technology known as LTE, in order to bring Verizon LTE compatibility to its revamped line of Chromebooks.
According to the new report, the laptops in question will be based on the Wi-Fi version of the HP Chromebook 11 that made an appearance on the market back in October. Thus HP will have the only LTE capable Chromebook offering on the market.
VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair, Eran Eshed said their “solution equips the Chromebook with a dependable and incredibly fast Internet connection.”
“By focusing on 100 percent LTE and eliminating costly 3G components, we were able to help our partners lower the cost of this critical LTE connectivity feature.”
The current HP Chromebook 11 allows its users to access the Internet only in the presence of an Wi-Fi hotspot, but with the Altair LTE chip embedded, the laptop could remain connected virtually anywhere.
It certainly makes sense that HP is looking to up its game in a market that’s starting to be increasingly crowded, but we can’t help but wonder if the company will add some new enhancement to the new line, except for the LTE feat.