With the intention of tapping the rapidly-growing demand for economical notebooks, Acer Inc Tuesday announced its plans of launching its Aspire One netbook, running on Google's Android mobile operating system, by this year's third quarter.

If Acer's plans work out as expected, the proposed Acer device might just turn out to be the first Android netbook available round the world!

Acer already happens to be the first company to demonstrate an Android-based netbook with an Intel Atom microprocessor. At its Tuesday news conference at Computex, Acer displayed the proposed netbook, with a dual-boot system that enables users to switch between Android and Windows XP.

The Acer move to venture into the low-priced netbook arena comes at a time when most of its rivals - including Dell and Hewlett-Packard - have marked their foray into the emerging market segment. Despite the fact that the profit margin in case of netbooks is fairly low, the netbooks' segment has catered effectively to the needs of price-conscious consumers, especially during the slowdown.

According to Jim Wong, Acer's President of global product operations, the company has decided to quicken its pace of working with Android as there is a robust development movement behind the software. Saying that the Android operating system offers "incredibly fast wireless connection to the Internet," Wong added that the company sees it as "becoming more common."