Android is arguably Google's bread and butter, but that doesn't mean the company doesn't want their other products to succeed. We've seen a big push from Chromebooks recently, especially in the low end market, and during the back-to-school shopping months it looks like that push paid off for Google.
Chromebooks made up 4.5% of all PC sales during the back-to-school period, which is up from 3.3% in 2013. It still holds a small chunk of the sales compared to Apple's nearly 27% and Microsoft's 68%, but the future for Chromebooks looks bright when you notice that Windows laptop sales were down from 72% and have been falling for a couple of years now.
Since just about every Chromebook available retails for under $300, it's clear that most of this progress is being made at the low end. Apple looks like they're pretty securely hanging onto the high-end market for PCs, but if this trend keeps up, Microsoft may have some serious competition on their hands. There have been a slew of cheaply priced Windows tablets and notebooks to try and stay competitive at the bottom, but Google has shown more expertise at grabbing up market share in recent years than Microsoft has.
source: NPD
via: OMG Chrome
With the increasing ability to at first run selected Android apps on Chrome followed by an unofficial way to run just about any Android app, it won’t surprise me to see either a dual-boot version with Chrome/Android or the ability to launch Android OS within Chrome similar to Blue stacks.
Bought myself a Chromebook earlier this year and work issued me a Macbook Air. I don’t miss Windows in the least.