It's too early to pass judgment on which brands can be deemed as the best Chromebooks of 2014, but according to studies, the Google-based machines are picking up on the market. Gartner, a leading information technology research and advisory company, predicts that Chromebook sales will reach 5.2 million this year and reach 14.4 million units by 2017.
The research company's principal analyst, Isabelle Durand, says, "Competition in the Chromebook market is intensifying as more vendors launch Chromebooks, with eight models in the market in 2014."
Further, she said, "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."
If sales are to be the basis for determining the best brand, then Samsung would be in the lead. According to the July 2014 report by Gartner, Samsung sold 1.7 million Chromebooks in 2013, clinching 64.9 percent of the market. Acer took 21.4 percent market share; HP had 6.8 percent; and Lenovo took 6.7 percent.
Being web-centric, the device is meant to be used mostly for cloud computing, thus it is effective for sharing documents. Chromebooks are getting to be competitive when it comes to school-use, and many educational establishments are starting to lean toward the more affordable device than the iPad, which is likewise being pushed for education purposes. Gartner says that the US education sector drove Chromebook sales in 2013, estimated to be 85 percent of the number of units sold last year.
According to Computer World, Connecticut's Bridgeport Public Schools received 11,000 Chromebooks last year, plus 5,000 to be added in the next 12 months; Colorado's Cherry Creeks School District has 18,000 units; and Boston deployed 10,000 machines to their schools.
In a report by The Atlantic: Hillsborough Middle School conducted a comparative experiment in the 2012-2013 school year, distributing Chromebooks to 200 students and iPads to another 200. After receiving feedback from both the teachers and students, the school decided to sell its iPads and will be distributing 4,600 Chromebooks to their students instead.
It's not saying that iPads are less effective; rather, students viewed it as "fun" while the Chromebook was viewed as a device for "work".
The school's director of technology Joel Handler told the online newspaper, "Our goal was [to find out] not really which device was better, per se, but which device met the learning goals."
