Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) said something interesting this week: It may join the ranks of PC makers and offer a netbook PC for sale. Why on earth Oracle would want to get into the extremely popular but low-margin netbook PC hardware business is an interesting mystery, but that's exactly what Oracle chief Larry Ellison indicated.Oracle, which is in the midst of closing its deal to buy Sun Microsystems, said that Sun's Java technology could be used to run a future Oracle-branded netbook PC. Ellison quipped that "I don't see why some of those devices shouldn't come from Sun . . . there will be computers that are fundamentally based on Java."
Since netbook PCs are used for very light computing tasks, it makes sense for non-traditional companies to try and break into the space. So far, Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows XP has been the most popular choice for netbook operating system software, probably due to consumer familiarity. Linux netbooks have not really caught on, and it may be a stretch to say a java-powered netbook (or even an Android-powered one) would be popular.
Netbooks continue to be a red-hot sales category in the PC industry, and Oracle must see something there to want to enter such a rapidly-growing but eerily turbulent hardware business. That is, unless it contracts everything out and slaps Java on it -- all of which would take very little effort. Is Oracle too late?
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