Details emerged in September of Aluminium OS, a new laptop operating system from Google designed to integrate closely with Android smartphones, including a taskbar button that opens apps mirrored from a connected phone. An operating system is the base software a computer runs; tighter phone-to-laptop links let one device pick up where the other left off.
The move points to a future where the phone is the main computer and the laptop is mostly a bigger screen and keyboard for it.
What it means: a business that already standardises on Android phones may soon get laptop-class work from the same devices and accounts, cutting the number of separate systems to buy, secure and support.