Amazon figures are in, and the once-derided Chromebook is now enjoying success. Of its top three best-selling laptops, Chromebooks make up two — Acer’s and Samsung’s models — with Asus’ transformer laptop/tablet hybrid coming in third.
When Chromebooks were revealed, they seemed like a good idea following the footsteps of netbooks — people want light, small, affordable, low-powered laptops that don’t take up much desk real estate. Basing an entire OS around a browser is like taking that idea to the extreme. But a netbook so reliant on the internet is not likely to go down as well down under, depending on where in Australia you are. Many of us are used to working in the cloud, but when the cloud is unavailable, for whatever reason, you need something else.
Then again, there are those who just don’t like Windows 8, and on the distributor end, it’s great to not have to pay anything for the OS on laptops you’re selling. So we’ll probably see more of them down here as time goes on. Sales like this mean the Chromebook isn’t going away anytime soon — 21% of all laptop sales in the US were Chromebooks in 2013. That’s not just Amazon – according to Computerworld, that’s the entire US.
In a statement, NPD’s Stephen Baker had this to say: “Tepid Windows PC sales allowed brands with a focus on alternative form factors or operating systems, like Apple and Samsung, to capture significant share of a market traditionally dominated by Windows devices.”
Microsoft’s slip in the laptop market is coupled by its continued shortcomings in the tablet market, which continues to be all about the iPad. ChromeOS is on the rise there, too, with a 10% share of sales.