An interesting tidbit of code has shown up in the Chromium change log for Chrome OS. The change outlines that the default wallpaper on a device can be controlled by the master configuration. In other words, manufactures like Acer, Dell and HP could have specific wallpapers for specific Chrome OS devices.
The ability for an OEM to set a default wallpaper has been in play for some time now. Both Acer and HP have a custom wallpaper that they have all their Chromebooks show when you first power them on. Google is incredibly strict with what OEMs can do to the Chrome experience. To this point, the manufactures had one wallpaper they could add and it was the same on every Chromebook.
In theory, when this change is rolled out to production, a manufacture could have one wallpaper for one device and a different one for the next. It would allow at least a skin deep differentiation
Acer Chromebook 14
between models. The question of course is when this will roll out into code but it has been committed to a future build.
So is this a big deal? For consumers, not really. You have been able to change your default wallpaper from the beginning to personalize your Chrome OS experience. For manufactures however, it is a big deal. They can now personalize things out-of-the-box with wallpapers that represent them or even have a small amount of branding.
