10 Percent of Computers Sold to Be Chromebooks, UK Retailer Believes

Chromebooks haven't exactly taken the world by storm, that much is certain, even if Google doesn't disclose sale numbers and won't for a time to come. But no one was expecting that from a rather radical new approach to computing.

Still, there are some people that have a lot more faith in the devices than pretty much everyone else. And no, they're not Google fanboys, Dixon, the largest electronics retailer in the UK, is predicting that Chromebooks will account for 10 percent of computer sales in one year's time.

The number comes from the retailer's computing section director, Mark Slater, as The Telegraph notes.

He believes that Chrome OS is a concept that will start to catch on and that a lot more people will be seeing it as an alternative in the next year.

He argues that operating system's two big advantages will be appealing to a lot of users, the direct cloud connection and the extreme ease of use, when it comes to maintenance, at least.

However, the prediction is based on quite a lot of ifs. Chrome OS' success depends on manufacturer support. Only Acer and Samsung offer Chromebooks at this point and none are known to have seen huge sales.

Chromebooks aren't exactly cheap either, some netbooks sell for less while offering almost the same hardware specs, minus the larger screen. A price point nearer to $199, €149 should lead to a surge in sales, but it should be hard to achieve without sacrificing profit margins considerably.

But it seems that at least one more player is interested enough to be thinking about building a device, HTC. The phone-maker is contemplating such a move, which would be quite a departure for the Taiwanese manufacturer.

More devices, or at least updated models are expected to land at CES next year, but Google will also have to double down on marketing efforts, not to mention getting more developers working on apps for the Web Store.