Chromebook sales outpaced the competition by a difference of approximately 87-percent in terms of year-over-year growth from March through June. That’s according to a recently reported post from Google’s Head of Chrome OS Developer Relations Iein Valdez. The post provides a brief overview, explaining the recent launch of a dedicated Chromebook development site. And the figures in question are cited to The NPD Group, Inc.
The growth, put in perspective, resulted in a unit sales growth for Chromebooks of 127-percent. The rest of the US notebook category, conversely, rose just 40-percent.
Now, the overall upward trend is, as Mr. Valdez notes, the result of users spending more time at home. Users are video chatting with friend and family, taking in entertainment media, and multitasking for work.
Why Chromebooks and laptops instead of smartphones?
Underlying the trend for Chromebooks and also for other notebooks, according to Google, is the fact that users want bigger screens and better performance. Samsung noted a similar trend alongside the launch of its Galaxy Tab S7 series tablets. More directly, it noted that the overall growth of the market for premium Android tablets is increasing. And that falls directly in line with laptop sales.
Sales for premium tablet devices priced at $350 and higher had grown by 230-percent by the devices’ 2020 launch.
On the contrary, smartphone sales as of Q2 2020 had dropped by 25-percent year-over-year in the US. So there seems to be a fairly substantial disparage in the market for personal and business-related electronics.
Summarily, smartphones have been on a downward curve with few exceptions while larger, higher-performance, work-ready laptops have been on the rise. Similarly, so have larger, more capable tablets. And to meet that trend, Google has launched a new developer site specifically for Chromebooks. That’s atop changes noted at the time to its Linux Terminal and Android Studio implementations.
What is Google hoping to accomplish here?
Providing a better user experience, such as should happen with the launch of the above-mentioned site, is almost always a good thing. But this does seem to go a bit deeper than that. The figures in question highlight that Chrome OS and Chromebook are still areas where rampant growth is possible. By capitalizing on bringing better app experiences and better tools to the platform, Google is making the platform more viable for a wider assortment of end-users.
The company also recently announced a bid to make Microsoft software available natively through a partnership with Parallels ties into that as well. While that will initially be available explicitly for Enterprise users, it could eventually make its way over to others. Summarily, Google is well-positioned to drive the growth of the Chromebook platform further. And the search giant appears to recognize that.