Splashtop already has an instant on service that allows users to access e-mail, chat, or surf the Web immediately after switching on their PCs. Now Splashtop, which is made by DeviceVM, has teamed with some leading search engines to add instant search to those capabilities. The search companies involved are Yahoo in the US and Japan, Baidu in China, and Yandex in Russia.
Dave Bottoms, senior director of product management at DeviceVM, told the BBC:
"I think this is the next new start experience frontier we are witnessing at the device level."
Splashtop is already pre-installed on 10 million PCs, covering 200 models by a number of manufacturers. The instant search means that users will see a branded search box as soon as they switch on their machines.
DeviceVM estimates Splashtop will be on 40 million computers by the end of this year, and 100 million by the close of 2010, and that the growth in netbooks will work well with instant search.
"Users generally use netbooks on the go for chunks of a half an hour or so compared to notebooks or laptops where they will spend around three hours at home or in an office,” Bottoms explained.
"With the emergence of netbooks, we are definitely seeing a lot of consumer demand for always being connected, always on and being able, at the press of a button, to get searching on the web quickly."