Chromebooks, Google-powered laptops, are slowly becoming the new face of the PC market after having originally launched as a niche product.
Renowned market analysis firm Gartner put together its predictions about the future of Chromebooks based on the current and previous saless and has predicted global sales of Chromebooks will triple by 2017 to 14.4 million units, outbidding the PC sales. In fact, the firm adds that the sales of Chromebooks will reach 5.2 million by the end this year, a 79 percent increase from last year.
"Competition in the Chromebook market is intensifying as more vendors launch Chromebooks, with eight models in the market in 2014," Isabelle Durand, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a Monday press release. "Now that the PC market is no longer growing strongly, vendors are searching for new business opportunities. They launched Chromebooks to revive interest in sub-$300 portable PCs once the netbook bubble had burst."
Students are also attracted to Chromebooks and their affordable price point. Powered by Google's Chrome OS, completely cloud-based for services like browsing and storage, Chromebooks are very fast – with less-than-7-second boot up times. Samsung and Acer have been successful vendors for Chromebooks, according to Gartner's report.
Acer carries a wide range of Chromebooks, covering all price ranges from low to high and with features that are matched accordingly. In July, the PC manufacturer announced the industry's first Tegra K1-powered Chromebooks on Monday and was also the first to use the Intel Core i3 processor. Acer claims it controls 46.7 percent of the Chromebook market share, offering many other Chromebooks, including touch-screens and sub-$200 models .
But Gartner's research shows Samsung had a lead in the Chromebook sector in 2013 with 65 percent of the market share and Acer followed the lead with 21.4 percent. Other PC makers such as Dell, HP and Lenovo also contributed to the Chromebook sales, but in small numbers.
