Inventec, a Taiwanese company that makes laptops on behalf of several of the world's best-known PC brand names, is developing up to four Snapdragon laptop models for customers, said Mark Hirsch [cq], vice president for marketing at the company.

The Snapdragon processor is based on the Arm microprocessor core and will compete with Intel's Atom, which currently powers most available netbooks. The chip should offer battery life of up to 6 hours, a physically smaller body and better integration with 3G networks, though it doesn't support the mainstream Windows operating system.

Inventec's latest reference design, running the Millos Linux operating system on a 10.1 inch screen, will be displayed by Qualcomm this week at Computex in Taipei. The laptop, intended to demonstrate the possibilities of the platform but not be a commercial product, uses a 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU. It features a 1,024 by 600 pixel resolution screen, a 64GB flash disk and integrated 3G wireless. It weighs about 800 grams.

The laptop is similar to many netbooks, but Qualcomm has coined the term "smartbook" to distinguish its ultra-portable laptops from others.

Many laptop makers are considering using Android, the Google-developed operating system, in such machines. One advantage Android may have over Linux is the sizable marketing power that Google could bring to its promotion.