Samsung Electronics will start selling ultra-light laptops early this week. Running on Google's Chrome operating system, one was unveiled in the U.S. on Thursday last week. It will cost US$249.

Like Google's cloud-based Chromebook, it does not have a hard drive but runs based on a web browser. Functions can be added by downloading apps from the Chrome's web store, making it a closer kin of smartphones and tablet PCs.

The competition between Microsoft and Google is set to intensify at the end of the month, when the former launches its latest operating system, Windows 8.