Biggest Tech Surprise of 2011: Google's Chrome OS

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- We hear a lot about the impact of Apple's(AAPL) iPad 2 these days, and we will surely hear as much about the expected iPhone 5 in June. Estimates of annual shipments for these products vary, of course, but they tend to be in the general ballparks of 50 million and 100 million units, respectively.

The iPad, in particular, is credited with taking market share from the general PC/laptop market. Surely, no devices launched in 2011 could beat this huge impact from iPad 2 and iPhone 5, right?

Yes, it could happen. The worldwide annual PC market is about 400 million units. Microsoft's(MSFT) Windows operating systems dominate. The attacks on Microsoft's dominance to date have been modest: Apple's Mac OS is shipping at a rate fewer than 15 million units per year, and these devices are generally much more expensive.

Apple's iPad may ship 50 million units over the next 12 months, but most people agree that the iPad, while a superb device in many respects, is not a replacement for a laptop in the eyes of serious workers; it's an important complement, but not a replacement.

In this context, I find the lack of attention paid to Google's(GOOG) Chrome OS unwise. For the last three months, I have been using Google's Chrome OS Cr-48 laptop and compared it to Apple's MacBook Pro and my old Dell(DELL) laptop. Let me start with the conclusion right away: I think that PCs based on Google's Chrome OS stand to take over a very large share -- perhaps as much as half -- of Microsoft's Windows PC franchise, over the course of only a few short years, starting in the third quarter of this year.

If I am right about this, we could expect Google Chrome OS PCs to ship to the tune of 200 million units per year by 2014. That would mean one of the highest and fastest impacts in any computer market ever. We think of seminal product introductions: Macintosh in 1984, Windows 95 in 1995, iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010. Here is my prediction: Some time already before 2012 is over, we will look at 2011 as being the year of the commercial introduction of the Google Chrome OS PCs as an equally seminal event.