14 DAY TRIAL // The Chromebook business at HP is apparently thriving. Hawlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, who was one of the speakers at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco this Monday, said she was surprised by the appeal Chromebook had on customers.
As CNET reports, the CEO pointed that the company was continuing to focus on its strategy of expanding beyond Windows (sorry, Microsoft), especially since its Chromebook sales have been so encouraging.
“Chromebooks have surprised us in the breadth of their field. It is not just education, it is small business.”
“It's a broader appeal than I originally anticipated or we anticipated that it would be...it does appear there is a real life to Chromebook in the small to medium-sized business and even in [corporate] enterprise.”
Chromebooks were initially created as a means to penetrate the educational market, by being offered to students in school programs. But in recent times the laptops’ grasp has been extended to reach small business and even enterprises.
Chromebooks are still not in a phase where they can be easily adopted by business users, but give them a few years and waves will certainly shift around.
For the time being, average consumers, students and small business are enchanted with these devices that do a good job at providing a platform for day-to-day tasks including taking notes, browsing the web and syncing email and other things like documents.
Last but not least, it’s quite hard to beat the affordability of the Chromebook, as most Windows laptops are priced a lot more.
HP experiencing such big demand in terms of Chromebooks is a little bit odd, especially considering the problems posed by the HP Chromebook 11 and its overheating charger.
HP had to go as far as to recall the products from retail and send out replacement chargers to customers who already purchased the device, complete with an apology later and a gift card to soften the blow. Nevertheless, it seems all that is water under the bridge now and the mishap hasn't affected customers' trust in the HP Chromebook brand.
At the moment HP offers two Chromebook models, the above mentioned one, available for $279 / €203, and a 14-inch version that ships for $299 / €217.
Other companies are seeing high demand for their Chromebook offerings too, including Acer with its C720. Samsung is the latest brand vendor to have released Chrome-enhanced laptops.
The Samsung Chromebook 2 line has been announced a few days ago and comes in 11-inch and 13-inch flavors with a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa chip under the hood.