As the holiday shopping season kicked off, Microsoft released a number of ads taking aim at Google Chromebooks. NPD Group’s 2013 notebook sale numbers through explain why Microsoft has quite a bit to fear from Google and its Chromebooks. More than a fifth of notebooks sold through U.S. commercial channels to businesses, schools and other such organizations between January and November 2013 have been Chromebooks.
While Chromebooks saw their share of U.S. commercial channel sales (which include desktops as well as tablets along with notebooks) climb from 0.2% in 2012 to 9.6% in 2013, Windows notebooks saw a drop from 42.9% to 34.1%. In fact, along with Android and Windows tablets, Chromebooks were the only segments to gain share. The trend first seen in the consumer space towards more portable devices has now spread to the commercial space as well.
“The market for personal computing devices in commercial markets continues to shift and change,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis, NPD. “New products like Chromebooks, and reimagined items like Windows tablets, are now supplementing the revitalization that iPads started in personal computing devices. It is no accident that we are seeing the fruits of this change in the commercial markets as business and institutional buyers exploit the flexibility inherent in the new range of choices now open to them.”
It would be interesting to see how Chromebooks have fared in the consumer space in 2013. Will we see a similar trend when numbers are published? Given Microsoft’s recent attack ads, such a scenario is not unlikely.
Source : NPD