2013 was the year of the explosion of Chromebook sales and in 2014, Lenovo has revealed plans to launch multiple versions of the notebook.
Lenovo's North American operations president Jay Parker said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: "I think Chromebooks can be very impactful in the market really quickly. We believe the market will accelerate greatly in the next 12 months."
So far, Lenovo has only offered Chromebook models for the educational market, but plans to make it available to the public sector.
Meanwhile, Toshiba introduced its first ever Chromebook at CES 2014. The Toshiba Chromebook comes with a 13.3 inch display with a resolution of 1366x768, Haswell Processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, and is priced at an affordable $279. It weighs 3.3 pounds and is 0.8 inch thick and has a battery life up to 9 hours. It also includes two USB 3.0 ports , a full-size HDMI port, security lock slot and a memory card reader. The Toshiba Chromebook will be available beginning February 16, 2014 at major retailers.
Samsung is also expected to release another Chromebook this year, following the success of the current version running on the Exynos 5250 dual-core processor which has been very successful. Business Korea reports that the Korean company is expected to upgrade its processor to the Exynos 5420 octa-core processor. The display resolution is also expected to improve with 2560x1600 pixels and will be offered in both 16GB or 32GB options.
There was speculation that Samsung would release the Chromebook at the CES 2014, but so far there has been no word from the company on an impending release date.
Google's Chromebooks proved to be one of the most popular notebooks last year, accounting for one in five out of every notebook sold in the country.
Samsung's Chromebook and Acer's C720 Chromebook were among the bestsellers on Amazon last year. HP also introduced its 11 inch and 14 inch Chrombook models last year.
The Chromebooks operate on the Chrome OS, and is a clear rival to notebooks running on Microsoft Windows 8.
Reports state that Chromebooks accounted for nearly 10 percent sales of all tablets, notebooks and desktops sold in the United States in 2013.
The Chromebook is also a rival to Apple's popular Macbook Air notebooks, which come in 13 inch and 11 inch versions. The price of the Macbook Air might not be suitable for everyone, but the price of the Chromebooks are affordable, and if you are in search of a functional laptop that you can use to browse websites, draft documents and other simple tasks, then the Chromebook is an alternative option.
