Chromebook Marketshare Should Be Growing Faster
Why doesn’t Google’s Chromebooks have more than 25% of the sub-$300 computer market? With Bloomberg reporting NPD Group Inc’s numbers on cheap laptop growth, the reaction is one of surprise that anything could buck the PC decline. Of course Chromebooks (the only viable option) are growing in a depleting market segment. Netbooks are all but dead and the tablets people are actually buying still cost more than $300. Chromebooks, the arguably better alternative to cheap Windows laptops, shouldn’t be seen as the darling of NPD’s numbers, keyboards and frugal consumers are the standout data points.
If Netbooks were the disposable promise they initially claimed and tried to be, numbers would have rose or stayed steady instead of tanking when the first adopters turned over. What appeared to happen was a surge of excitement followed by extreme letdown as those consumers better realized what they were really looking for, high quality small machines. The price was only the spark that fueled the illusion.
The expectation was for tablets to continue destroying the low end, but Google’s proving with the Chromebook that there’s still demand for the laptop design with a keyboard connected to a screen. The biggest difference between an Android tablet running Chrome from an Acer or Samsung Chromebook is input method. So, if the education sector or business professionals are looking for low cost keyboard computers, their primary option is the recent influx of Chromebooks.
The sub-$300 laptop market will always be tough to crack because of the old adage, you can only ever have two out of the three traits you want. You can have a small and cheap laptop, a small and high quality laptop, but not small, cheap, and high quality one. Google Chromebooks aren’t immune to those tradeoffs, but the quality bar does get raised slightly when software costs for the manufacture go away. A $250 Chromebook is still a $250 computer, but without much competition you’d think they’d have more than 20-25% of the sub-$300 PC market.