Published in AI

Gartner has another death of the PC moment

by on12 August 2014



This time they will be killed by Chromebooks

Now that the PC market is climbing out of recession, beancounters working for Gartner are predicting that Chromebooks are going to put it back there.

This year, Gartner estimates that total Chromebook sales will hit 5.2 million, which is up 79 per cent from 2013. Looking further out to 2017, the number of units shifted should reach 14.4 million, in other words we're looking at a near tripling of sales inside three years. Gartner seems to think that Chromebooks are going to be super-important in the business world. 

Isabelle Durand, principal analyst at Gartner, admits that so far, businesses have looked at Chromebooks, but not bought many. But by adopting Chromebooks and cloud computing, businesses can benefit; they can shift their focus from managing devices to managing something much more important their data.

Chromebooks have been doing well in the education sector where they fix the problem of tablets not having keyboards. In 2013, the education sector was responsible for almost 85 per cent of Chromebook sales. This will all be worrying for Apple which is obviously not interested in Chromebooks or anything like it and has given the market to Samsung. Samsung has 65 per cent of the market, and Acer snaffling much of the rest at 21 per cent. HP and Lenovo were in a practical dead-heat for third place at 6.8 and 6.7 per cent respectively, with Dell trailing on at 0.3 per cent.

It seems that while tablets and smartphones were going to kill off the PC and didn’t, now the analysts money is on the Chromebook and cloud combo.

Rate this item
(0 votes)

Read more about: