Can we have figures that mean something?
A 67% increase on 100 or a billion?
Sick of this useless marketing bullshit speak.
Chromebooks are set to become the next big thing in personal computing devices after sales skyrocketed by two thirds over the last quarter. Shipments of Chromebooks jumped 67 per cent during the second quarter of 2014, and are projected to double in size year-on-year according to ABI Research. Acer moved the most Google- …
Here in Germany, I have yet to see a single Chromebook for sale at MediaMarkt, Saturn or Telepoint. On Amazon the cheapest I've seen was the ARM based Samsung, but that was about 100€ more than entry level Windows laptops...
There is not a single Chromebook on Amazon's top 50 bestseller list - although there are 3 Android based devices in the list.
"sales skyrocketed by two thirds over the last quarter"
Not for long I think. With Microsoft's removal of the licensing fees for small screen devices and the latest Intel chipsets, you can get a proper laptop running Windows for that kind of money, not a cutdown and limited inferior product like Chrome.
"...not a cutdown and limited inferior product like Chrome."
Says someone who has clearly never used a Chromebook.
I think we can safely assume that Windows running on a similarly-spec'd box as a Chromebook will not boot within ten seconds from scratch. It might just crawl up to speed within a minute.
It will also require regular updates (which will take minutes at a time) to keep it secure, as opposed to regular automated Chromebook updates which taken literally seconds to run. Oh - and you'll have to run an anti-virus check on it all the time, which will make it run even more slowly.
It will barely be able to run Microsoft Office, and will not be able to run most games. Which is basically the same as a Chromebook.
So what was that about cutdown and limited?
Nice to have some numbers! The worldwide PC shipments for that quarter was around 75m, 5m of which were Macs. Assuming the growth numbers stay the same, there will be more Chromebooks than Macs sold around 2016. It's not negligible, but it's not that much either.
If we compared to smartphones in terms of current market share, I guess Chromebooks would be Windows phones, Windows would be Android, and Apple would be Apple. The winds seem to be blowing differently, though.
Are they not exiting this market in Europe? Hmmm an HP/Acer duopoly is not good.
I also wonder whether the Chromebook boom is in no small part many of us realising that we can do almost all our mobile work on tablets or smartphones. Great for reading stuff, just crap at creating or controlling it. So a tablet like environment with a real keyboard is great and we live in times when boot up times of more than 5 seconds are no longer acceptable. That's Chromebook-land.
Many of us can now live without a laptop, pocket the savings and carry less weight.
I have a Kubuntu crouton on mine - just in case I need it to be a 'real' PC. But that doesn't get used that much. We are much cloudier than we think we are and Chromebooks encourage it. Unless you are locked in the past.
Yeah I've said before that I was sniffy about them at first then nearly two years ago I bought one and have been smitten ever since. The robustness of a tablet with a decent keyboard attached.
I took mine of a three week holiday to Canada a few weeks ago. The gf enquired why I was taking it but was rather glad when something at work went tits up and she had to spend a couple of hours pinging emails back and forth which wouldn't have been that fun on her Nexus 7.
Plus I didn't take the charger with me and it lasted all holiday with an hour to spare.
That's what I was thinking. Other than to post what people above had beaten me to, that percentages without some idea of actual numbers are meaningless. I've seen them in PC World, but I've never seen a customer even look at one. In my local one, they're in the unloved corner, with Surface where nobody goes.
My Mum has just got rid of her desktop. Since we got her an iPad, I don't think she sees much reason to be arsed to get off the sofa and walk to the office. I fixed something on her PC for her the other day, and it hadn't been booted for over a month, yet she gets more emails in a day than I do. In her case she's gone for a hand-me-down Macbook Air - but had one of the family not had that, a Chromebook might have suited her equally well. Something with a keyboard, that can be used on sofa or table, for typing longer emails. And in her case, the odd report.
Myself, I find the ergonomics of a desktop unbeatable. But I'm in a small minority.
Yep. The desktop form factor is unbeatable for working on (more than just reading/typing emails). If you do all your work on a laptop, then you're not working efficiently, nor are you doing your body any favours.
The Chromebook easily handles the use cases of when a laptop's form factor is suitable. They are how "netbooks" are supposed to be.
I have seen some interest in PC World while wandering around. Quite a lot if you compare the area of Windows machines to the sole Chromebook stand, but not as much as the fondlslabs and Apple kit was getting.
I suspect most ended up buying a fondleslab though, probably the cheaper iPads or Android. But then I am not a sales guru like Gartner, etc, so why listen to me?
This post has been deleted by its author
While I can see* the use of having your Chrome settings and apps working across tablets/phones/laptops, doing so over a satellite connection would be a little costly - only for the well-connected**.
*Closet neanderthal - I like my data where I can lay hands on it & Google probably wouldn't let me in to their heaven-like cloud cathedral to tend to my data if need be.
** Recently found in another Reg story (old Jag rebuild) American gas sucks mightily 92 vs Norway's (and everywhere else in the world, seems like) 99 octane premium gas.... self-esteem: ruined.
I bought a 14" HP chromebook in June. Within 48 hours I'd dumped Chrome OS for openSuSE Linux 13.1 - this machine uses an Intel processor, so runs any ordinary distro. There were a few issues getting the touchpad to work but once solved it runs like a dream - and with amazing battery life. Shame there's so little room on the 16G SSD, but not only do I have firefox with all the privacy improvements (noscript etc) but I can and do run software installed on my desktop using X forwarding.
There is little chance than many readers here on TheRegister and other Microsoft supportive media such as ZDNet will accept any truth to this story, even though other reputable and respected Technology Market Research entities publish very similar results stories.
This subtle fact, combined with continuing news of Microsoft poor sales showings with Smartphones and Tablets - by comparison with Apple and Android systems which outpace MS in area of twenty times sales and growth - drives Microsofties into panicked mania, usually resulting in gibberish and non-factual responses and comments in the forums.
"continuing news of Microsoft poor sales showings with Smartphones and Tablets"
You must have missed Microsoft's recent results - record revenues with Smartphone sales up year on year - and Surface sales are about to hit $1 billion a year up 127%.
Windows Phones and Surface are starting to really take off in the enterprise too - there have been several recent announcements of large WP and Surface wins of migrations away from Apple and Blackberry.
Do I use our Samsung Chromebooks for real work, development, reports, etc? No. But checking email and checking the real story behind news you see talking heads trying to explain without having to get up and go to the home office is very useful. The Chromebook is not a fire breathing desktop gaming machine, but only a fool would buy one thinking that it is. But it's extremely good at doing what it was intended to do. Many windows laptops can not make that claim.