Chromebooks have slowly but surely been gaining ground. With more and more PC manufacturers jumping on board to transition from Netbooks running Windows, to Netbooks running Chrome OS. We started with Samsung and Acer, and have grown to include ASUS, HP, LG, Toshiba and Dell. All of which have Chromebooks listed in our most recent monthly Top 10 Best Chromebooks.
According to industry analysts at Gartner, it sounds like Chromebooks are going to pick up a big chunk of market share this year. With shipments increasing by about 27%, and will have over 7 million units shipped in 2015. However, in 2016 Chromebook shipments are expected to rise just 9.1% to about 7.9 million units sold. To give you an idea of just how small that number really is, over 72 million traditional PC’s – not including Chromebooks – were sold already this year. So Chrome is still going to have a pretty small amount of market share, but it is rising, and that’s a great thing for Google.
In 2014, only 5.7 million Chromebooks were sold, and of that about 72% of those were snapped up by education customers like schools and universities. Showing that Chromebooks do belong in schools. Especially since they take less money to maintain compared to the traditional Windows Laptops and PC’s, or even Macbooks and iMacs. On the not so surprising front, the highest number of consumers that bought Chromebooks was in North America, at about 39%. Not too surprising considering most Chromebooks are only available in North America.
Acer is the most popular Chromebook manufacturer. Not too surprising, I’d say. Acer has a slew of models available. Including their new Chromebook 15, the Chromebook 13 with the NVIDIA Tegra K1 inside, as well as their C720 series Chromebooks. Their Chromebooks range from $199 to about $500. So they have something for everyone. The company sold about 2 million Chromebooks last year alone. That’s about one third of the total Chromebooks sold worldwide in 2014. That’s a pretty decent number.
With Google I/O right around the corner, it’s actually a week from today! We’re expecting some changes to Chrome OS during the Keynote at Google I/O, which might help Chromebooks gain even more ground.