Google may be thinking about designing its own smartphone chipset

In a new report (read: rumor) from The Information, Google could be in the process of courting OEMs to build their own processors for use in future Android devices. Apparently they’ve recently been sitting down with multiple microchip vendors, showing off some of the designs they’re interested in co-developing, but there was no information on who might bite first. Similar to the way Apple designs their own specialty Ax chips for use inside the iPhone and iPad, Google hopes that by being directly involved in the chip making process, they can build these chips around Android, guaranteeing future releases will work properly across their hardware. It’s really not too far fetched an idea. Google takes the same approach when building Nexus smartphones and tablets, so an SoC to power these devices sounds like the next logical move. We can’t help but wonder if this could mean the return of some sort of Android Silver program, with OEMs building high-end devices around Google’s processor and Google doing the honors of supplying direct software updates to consumers. A boy can dream…