Chromebooks are more than a fad: according to Gartner, 5.2 million of the low-powered, ChromeOS-driven devices will be sold this year. What we’re not seeing is massive deployments within enterprises and workplaces.
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That 2014 figure is a 79 per cent increase on 2013. The biggest driver for sales? Education purchases in the US, which accounted for nearly 85 per cent of all sales. Chromebooks are also largely am American phenomenon; the US accounted for 82 per cent of all sales. In part, that reflects the late arrival of Chromebooks in other markets; Australia didn’t see any released until 2013.
It’s also a very uneven market, with Samsung dominating sales:
Manufacturer | Percentage |
---|---|
Samsung | 64.9% |
Acer | 21.4% |
HP | 6.8% |
Lenovo | 6.7% |
Dell | 0.3% |
The rise in bring-your-own-device means we’re likely to see more Chromebooks in offices, but traditional PCs aren’t dead just yet. That 5.2 million units is dwarfed by the predicted 300 million desktops and notebooks Gartner expects will be sold this year.
Comments
2 responses to “Chromebook Sales Are Growing, But Business Buyers Are Resisting”
Why use a Chromebook for business at the moment? They aren’t the best for business, more tuned for personal use and Australia isn’t the best for Internet connections with rural places still suffering 🙁
I actually have the perfect use case for these – need to deploy to around 150 users that need to access a web application on something with a keyboard that we can lock down and that can be remotely managed. Having minimal/no local storage and limited functionality is a huge bonus (no iPad syndrome of “well I let my grandson play with it on the weekend and now it doesn’t work”). I’m surprised others aren’t in the same boat.
It seems like a classic case of invention being the mother of all necessity.