The first laptops powered by Google Inc's Chrome operating system will reach store shelves months later than expected and miss the holiday shopping season as the Internet company fixes software issues.

The Web-centric computers, intended as an incursion into territory dominated for years by Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc, will ship around the middle of 2011.

Google, the world's No. 1 Internet search engine, is holding off launching the Chrome-based PCs until it can fix some software bugs and make sure that the computers are compatible with other devices such as digital cameras, Google product manager Sundar Pichai said in San Francisco on Tuesday.

"Amazing progress, but we aren't fully done yet," Pichai said at a press briefing.

Once they arrive, the computers will embody Google's strongest foray into consumer and business computing.

Prices of the laptops have not been determined, executives said when asked if the notebook computers might cost less than traditional PCs which brim with storage and processing hardware. "You will see a variety of notebook price units," Pichai said.

Samsung Electronics and Acer Inc will make the first laptops. Intel Corp will make the first-batch processors.

As with Android mobile phones, the Chrome software is expected to spur people to use the Internet more often and search for more things. That could boost Google's Internet ads business.

The Chrome Internet browser, on which the operating system is based, has 120 million users, Google said.