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Chromebook sales are constantly rising. With the eventual capability that they'll be able to run Android programs, as well as PNaCl and Emscripten borrowing fr
by Mikeb85 12y ago
Chromebook sales are constantly rising.
With the eventual capability that they'll be able to run Android programs, as well as PNaCl and Emscripten borrowing from each other and getting better offering opportunity for tons of apps to be ported to the web, and then of course HTML5 and Js becoming the technology of choice for all sorts of apps, Chromebooks are the eventual future.
Maybe they're not the present, but they ARE the future.
And this is the main thing - for millions (hundreds of millions, maybe billions soon), a smartphone is their first entry to the internet. Probably an Android. When they see the Chrome logo in a laptop they can afford, and they already like the Android/Chrome ecosystem, they'll buy it, versus Windows which is associated with viruses, scams, piracy, etc...
Keep in mind Googles current business is still search. The net they're casting has nothing to do with the present, they're gunning for 7 billion people to associate them with computing, and to create the new future of computing.
Go to the third world. Yes some families have cheap PCs running pirated XP, but every kid has a cheap smartphone that they can connect to the internet with. They all have Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc...
- ntakasaki 12y ago>Chromebook sales are constantly rising Where are the real shipping numbers from Google then? Surely they must know the numbers? Why won't they release it then? The only reason I can think of could be that they aren't all that great.
- Mikeb85 12y agoYou do realise that Asus, Lenovo, HP, etc... sell Chromebooks, right? Google sells very few branded as a 'Google' product. The numbers are out there, but Google isn't releasing numbers because they're a tiny vendor.
- ntakasaki 12y agoYou mean Google does not know exactly how many Chromebooks are being sold by Asus, Lenovo, HP, etc?
- jhall1468 12y agoNo. Why would they? You think Asus, Lenovo and HP are giving sales data to Google?
- jeromegv 12y agoThey do know about Android activations, it's not so far fetched.
- robotresearcher 12y agoAll the Chromebooks phone home regularly checking for updates, etc. Google knows exactly how many have been used and are in use now.
- Mikeb85 12y agoThey probably do, but all those are public companies. They all report sales a certain way. Google isn't going to mess with reporting sales that other companies are making. That's irresponsible.
- acchow 12y agoI don't have a Chromebook, but I think you have to sign into a Google account to use a Chromebook, so surely they have the numbers?
- kaared 12y agoYou can use it in guest mode without a Google account or other authentication. I don't remember if you need to explicitly set it up to do that, though. I'm sure Google has the numbers since the Chromebooks/Chromeboxes auto-update (part of the whole point, really) so given that they likely have unique device IDs (or ethernet MAC addresses), the 'live devices count' would be rather easy to figure out.
- scholia 12y ago"Chromebooks in Q3 2013 had at best a 1.2 percent share of the PC market and a 0.76 percent share of the combined PC-tablet market." Latest IDC figures show Chromebooks continue to struggle http://www.zdnet.com/article/latest-idc-figures-show-chromebooks-continue-to-struggle/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/latest-idc-figures-show-chromeb...
- mkozlows 12y agoQ3 2013 is a long time ago. According to NPD, Chromebooks had 14% market share in 2014, counting retail and commercial (read: education) channels. Growth was up 85% year over year, too, which is amazing in the context of a stagnant/declining laptop market. http://betanews.com/2015/02/24/2015-is-year-of-the-chromebook/ http://betanews.com/2015/02/24/2015-is-year-of-the-chromeboo...
- scholia 12y agoNPD is a less reliable source covering a much smaller market (not that any of them are reliable).
- scholia 12y agoChromebook sales are about 1% of all PC sales, says ABI Research http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/22/chromebook-sales-pc-acer-hp-samsung http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/22/chromebook... Different source, different paper, different journalist, same conclusion. The idea that Chromebooks sell in volume is delusional, at this point, and downvotes won't make it any less delusional.
- Mikeb85 12y agoYou can spin it all sorts of ways. Keep in mind the 'PC' market includes all those legacy Windows XP computers which are languishing in peoples homes, businesses, corporations, etc... Chromebook sales are a much bigger part of current PC sales. And vendors do keep expanding their Chromebook lines. If it was a failure they wouldn't.
- ssmoot 12y ago> "Maybe they're not the present, but they ARE the future." That reminds me of Sun in the early 90's. I'm not saying you're wrong. But I don't think it's inevitable you're right either. Especially since browser UI toolkits are still stuck in the stone age compared to native counterparts. Until that gets fixed, I actually think it's probably just wishful thinking.
- Mikeb85 12y agoHow ubiquitous is Java? Containers, VMs, etc..., ARE all the rage. Sun was correct as to what technology belongs to the future, they just couldn't position their company properly. Odds are we're all using technology that's part of Sun's legacy...
- ssmoot 12y agoThat wasn't the vision that I recall. Maybe part of some of it, but I'm talking about the Internet Terminal idea. A lot of cool things came out of Sun. I don't think this was one. Have you tried Web IDEs? They're probably decades behind their desktop counterparts.
- sjtechie 12y agoYou mean like Atom? A lot of the web IDEs are pretty good nowadays. Not decades behind desktop software.
- ssmoot 12y agoNo. Atom is a text-editor with plugins. It's no more a competitor for IntelliJ than UltraEdit was a competitor to Visual Studio.NET. (IMO) But I was actually talking about in-browser environments like CodeAnywhere.
- Mikeb85 12y agoAtom is in-browser. It just so happens to ship with its own browser (Atom-Shell is based on Chromium)...