“Chromebooks, the minimalist laptops powered by Google’s browser-based Chrome operating system, exploded onto the market share this year, and appear to be finishing the year on particularly strong note,” Matt Marshall reports for VentureBeat. “According to just one popular metric, Amazon.com is showing that Chromebooks make up three of its top four best-seller laptops.”
“And that’s after Chromebooks already boosted their overall market share among commercial buyers (businesses, schools, governments, etc) through November this year to 21 percent for notebooks, and 10 percent for all computers and tablets, according to the market research firm, NPD Group,” Marshall reports. “That’s up from almost nothing last year: two-tenths of one percent for all computer and tablet sales.”
“That’s really rough news news for Microsoft, which is the principal loser of market share against the Chromebooks,” Marshall reports. “Samsung‘s Chromebook and the Acer C720 Chromebook — came in as two of the three best-selling notebooks during the U.S. holiday season. The third was Asus‘ Transformer Book, a Windows 8.1 device that can alternate between a 10.1-inch tablet to a keyboard-equipped laptop.”
MacDailyNews Take: There’s a special tier of stupid reserved for “Asus Transformer Book” owners. As with “Do you own a Surface tablet?”, it should be used in job interviews as an instant disqualifier.
“Google is doing with its Chrome OS for PCs what it did with Android for smartphones: License its operating system to manufacturers essentially for free, in the interest of spreading web-based devices that help Google to serve more web-based advertising,” Marshall reports. “A good part of Microsoft’s business is based on Windows, and so it can’t afford to give it away for fee.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Between them, like a mercilessly tightening vise, Apple from the top down and Google from the bottom up, are squeezing beleaguered Microsoft to death.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
These are very nice looking units that look very much like a MacBookAir, for one-quarter the price. Unfortunately, the resemblance ends at the skin of the device. These are definitely loss-leaders designed to hook you into the Google data-mining enterprise. And useless without an always-on internet connection, extremely limited even when they are connected. I can see the target market for these, and it’s not for the tech-savvy. It’s skewed somewhat towards the same demographic as the iPad, but it pales in comparison when it comes to functionality. I truly feel sorry for the folks whom I’ve met sporting these devices, they have been bamboozled, not unlike the Surface owners I run into, but at least they didn’t drop a grand in the process. These devices have nice hardware, granted, but the “OS” ( and I use the term in the loosest possible meaning ) is so limited as to make them useless for everyday functionality, or eben, limited functionality. Great eye-candy, and a huge potential for the worst case of buyer’s regret ever for any recent tech device. I’d take an Android phablet over one of these anyday, and I would never buy or recommend one of those either.
dmz
Microsoft doomed? Really? Lets look at the data shall we?! Nothing like hyped journalist to screw around with stock markets.
The facts say Microsoft is more doomed than a Jonestown kool-aid party.
You can hardly say that Microsoft is doomed. If Apple had the market share that MS had, would Apple be considered doomed?!
Microsoft doomed? No.
First, their giant footprint in corporate insures they have enough time to steer clear of the next iceberg. Second, their somnambulant board awoke just in time to decommission the ship’s incompetent captain. Third, they have plenty of ballast they can throw overboard if need be. Fourth, even if they sink, they can throw in with James Cameron, licence the movie, book, and documentary rights and clean up.
With a fresh crew, confident steerage, and mutineers abaft, they can once and for all deep-six the RMS Titanic metaphor. The correct metaphor, missed by our Dick-and-Jane Dunciad, is that of Captain Ahab and the White Whale.
People buy Chromebooks because they are cheap. No other reason, they would even consider them. If your only Chromebook choice was the $1300 Pixel. Do you really think that would even make the top 100 on Amazon? Even Google employee’s use Mac’s exclusively so the argument that a Chromebook can replace a Mac or a PC is mute. A Chromebook is a minimalist device for a user not typically demanding of a PC or a Mac. Someone who chooses a notebook like device over a tablet. Much of Chromebooks sales are in education where dollars are few and yet the need for tech is great. I am neither knocking or endorsing Chromebooks. This again is a device that will either be enough or lacking for users. Mac sales have dwindled more because of the iPad then anything else. PC sales have been hurt by Windows 8, tablets and the economy which has prevented much of enterprise from spending on tech. Which makes up far more sales for PC’s then say Mac’s which are more consumer sales. Chromebooks don’t even make up 1% of devices accessing the internet. The biggest increase in web access of a device has been smartphones. Even tablets only make up around 5% of internet traffic.
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I’ve had my Dell chromebook 11 for a month, it’s awesome! Bye bye Windows…