A recent report from Digitimes claims that the Android’s new OS dubbed “Jelly Bean” is scheduled to launch at some pint in the second quarter.The publication feels confident enough to quote a number of Taiwanese suppliers claiming that we will see a range of tablet devices and notebooks which are capable of running dual operating systems.

The publication also claims that vendors will be able to add Android 5.0 to a Windows 8-based tablet or notebook, allowing users to switch between the operating systems without a reboot.

Google could be looking at Android 5.0 Jelly Bean as a way to resurrect its notebook/netbook ambitions. Google already has a netbook OS, called Chrome, but it has failed to really grab any share. It is available in a handful of inexpensive netbooks from manufacturers such as Samsung.

The latest version of the Android operating system, known as Ice Cream Sandwich, was announced in May of last year before being showcased on the Galaxy Nexus smartphone later in October. Four months down the line and it seems that only approximately 1% of Android devices are running versions of Android 4.0, bring about big concerns and showing that the adoption of the latest OS has been a lot slower than expected.

With Microsoft getting set to release its brand new Windows 8 operating system in the third quarter of 2012, the speculation suggests that Google are looking for an end of quarter two release for Jelly Bean to provide competition for Windows 8.

Considering that the hardware requirements for Windows 8 would prevent users from installing a second OS on ARM-based PCs due to a locked Secure Boot system. What’s not known is if Microsoft’s manufacturing partners would have permission to ignore that when designing machines. What’s also interesting is that no mention of smartphones is made with respect to Android 5.0. Google specifically designed Android 4.0 to combine the best features of Android 3.2 with Android 2.3 and create a master platform that works equally well on smartphones and tablets. So far, only one Android 4.0 smartphone is available, though Android 4.0 tablets are expected to arrive soon. Android 4.0 has barely had a chance to get a foothold in the market.

Google also pushed its I/O developers conference back by six weeks, to the end of June rather than the middle of May. Does Google need this extra six weeks to finish work on products that will be announced at I/O?

Stay tuned for more news and info on this topic by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and/or subscribing to our RSS feed.