According to a Thursday confirmation coming from Lenovo, the company intends announcing a ‘smartbook’ – a small and economical netbook which uses an ARM processor and a non- Windows operating system - at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010.

The term ‘smartbook,’ which has become the most trendy term coined of late, has been devised to describe laptop-style computers that run sub-Atom processors, like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, and are packaged with cellular data plans.

The extremely brief glimpse of the new and captivating Lenovo smartbook, unveiled by Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs at Thursday’s Qualcomm event, revealed that the smartbook will be the first device in the category to feature the ARM-based Snapdragon processor. The device, boasting an HD-supporting display, will also run a variation of a Linux OS.

Acknowledging the brief unveiling of the Lenovo smartbook, a Qualcomm spokeswoman, who refrained from disclosing either the name or the price of the device, said in an email: “Lenovo is developing a smartbook based on Snapdragon, which we expect to announce at CES. At our financial analyst meeting, Paul Jacobs briefly demonstrated a prototype design. Unfortunately, there are no further details at this point.”

Meanwhile, an AT&T spokesman confirmed that the Lenovo smartbook will be sold by AT&T, and will most likely be part of the carrier’s subsidized data plan, similar to what other wireless carriers have done earlier.