Chromebook adoption will continue to grow at a tremendous rate

Aug 12, 2014 09:36 GMT  ·  By

There is still a lot of controversy regarding Chromebooks. Some people love them, some people hate them. And since Microsoft’s Bingbook assault has started, future Chromebook sales might plunge into the abyss.

But new research coming from Gartner shows us that the future is quite bright for Chromebooks. According to information provided by them, Chromebook sales will continue to accelerate at an impressive rate.

The firm expects to see 5.2 million Chrome-OS laptops ship out in 2014. By the time we reach 2017, those numbers will hit the 14.2 million threshold.

This means Chromebooks sales will see a 79% increase compared to the year before. In 2013, 82% of the sold Chromebooks shipped out to customers in North America. This is quite encouraging for Chromebook manufacturers like Samsung and Acer.

Especially Acer, which seems to be taking its Chromebook business quite seriously, as the device maker has plenty of products from this category to offer.

Just yesterday, the company launched the industry’s first Tegra K1-powered Chromebook, expected to deliver up to 13 hours of battery life.

At first, customers were reluctant to adopt a Chromebook, with the main reasons being the lack of a competent app ecosystem and the device’s continuous reliance on an Internet connection to get most tasks done.

However, Google has taken important steps to offer a better offline mode experience and many device manufacturers have taken to building Chromebooks that arrive with the most diverse configurations.

The Gartner report also states a pretty well-known fact for those following the world of Chromebooks. Most sales are derived from education and this is an important aspect of the equation.

A while ago we reported that Dell Chromebook 11 had become unavailable for purchase on the company’s website. According to the company, this measure was taken due to high demand, but educational institutions could still purchase the device through local sales representatives.

Like Acer, Dell has been feeding on its Chromebook success and is planning a more powerful model that will arrive with an Intel Core i3 processor under the hood.

In 2013, Samsung and Acer dominated the Chromebook market worldwide, where the Korean tech giant holds 65% of the market and Acer follows suit with 21.4%.

But things might shift around, especially since Acer has brand-new Intel Core i3 and NVIDIA Tegra K1 laptops on the market.

Despite their popularity, Gartner believes that device manufacturers should concentrate on a few things in order to make their devices even better, including providing faster connectivity, faster/larger solid-state memory drives and faster memory access.

Chromebook vendors' shares of sales worldwide in 2013
Chromebook vendors' shares of sales worldwide in 2013

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Chromebook sales will continue to increase
Chromebook vendors' shares of sales worldwide in 2013
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