14 DAY TRIAL // When we talk about Chromebooks, we usually correlated them to the educational environment, because it’s where they have thrived the most.
For example, not so long ago it was revealed that Dell-only Chromebook 11 sales were halted and the decision was blamed on the company’s inability to cope to the extraordinary demand for the product.
Educational customers were invited to place their orders with local representatives as opposed to buying online.
Now it looks like Chromebooks are not devices to be thought of only in an educational context, but also in a wider business-to-business environment (B2B). B2B incorporates governmental establishments, organizations and business which usually buy these machines in bulk.
The latest figures provided by research group NPD are showing us Chromebooks B2B sales have spiked with over 250% in the last year.
Businesses looking to acquire Chromebooks these days have multiple choices coming from companies like Acer, Samsung, HP, Dell, Lenovo and ASUS.
These devices aren't only affordable but have started to be produced with decent specifications, as is Acer’s latest model that arrives with Intel Core i3 under the hood.
The NPD report claims that, in the first five months of the year, Chromebooks managed to account for up to 35% of all notebook sales, a percent which translates into 1.4 million units sold.
This favorable trend is expected to continue especially since the back-to-school season is knocking on our door.
Nevertheless, before we make claims such as “Chromebooks are going to dethrone traditional notebooks soon” we should take into consideration how the numbers offered by the NPD Group are obtained.
NPD bases its finding on data provided by certain retailers, business and re-sellers. Morever, the numbers provided cover only the B2B sphere, thus leaving out the average consumer base.
However, NPD offers a few specific details breaking the numbers by companies. The news are bad for Samsung, as we already told you, the company has been dethroned by Acer in the quest for the Chromebook market supremacy.
According to NPD, Samsung has experienced a 40% drop in Chromebook sales, but this could be explained by the fact that a lot of companies have jumped onboard of the Chrome OS bandwagon, including Toshiba, ASUS and Dell.
NPD provides the figure for the first half of 2014 with Samsung holding 48% of share and Acer 31%, but as reported before, Acer managed to take number one spot as top Chromebook vendor in Q2 2014. Coming in at number three was HP with 17%. The other Chromebook manufacturers combined all fell in the Other category.