Schools And Universities Drive Record Chromebook Sales In 2014

Google’s Chromebooks enjoyed a major surge of popularity in 2014 to record their strongest year of sales yet – and 2015 could be even better.

Data from Gartner has revealed that Chromebook sales are set to reach 7.3 million in 2015 – a 27 percent increase year on year. Acer took the lead to become the largest worldwide Chromebook vendor last year, thanks to sales of over two million units in 2014.

Samsung held the No. 2 position with 1.7 million units sold in 2014, despite its decision to exit the European Chromebook market and focus on tablets, with HP ranked in third with one million units sold, thanks to its strong connection with education partners.

Rising sales

The education sector was a major driver behind the global upswing in sales, Gartner found, being responsible for 72 percent of Chromebooks sales in the EMEA region, as well as 69 percent in Asia/Pacific, and 60 percent in the U.S last year.

However despite a major push by Google to target the business sector – including the launch of its Chromebook for Work suite of office applications – enterprise sales remained low, although Gartner reported interest from SMBs and some verticals..

“Chromebook is a device that can be considered by SMBs or new start-up companies that do not have the resources to invest too much in IT infrastructure,” said Isabelle Durand, principal analyst at Gartner.

“Chromebooks will become a valid device choice for employees as enterprises seek to provide simple, secure, low-cost and easy-to-manage access to new web applications and legacy systems, unless a specific application forces a Windows decision.”

North America was the largest market, with 84 percent of global Chromebooks sales, followed by the EMEA region with 11 percent of total sales.

“The majority of Chromebook users are tech-savvy individuals who purchase one as a companion device to their primary notebook or desktop PC. Others are buying a Chromebook for the household to use as a second low-cost PC alternative,” Durand added.

“The major factors that affect the adoption of Chromebooks by consumers remain the connectivity issue in emerging markets, but also the ability for users to understand and get used to cloud-based applications, and keep content in the cloud and ecosystem.”

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