Chromebooks to remain a 'niche market', says Gartner

With an estimated 85 per cent of shipments last year into education, vendors urged to improve features to reach wider audience

Chromebooks may have Microsoft on the defensive but are destined to remain a "niche market", according to Gartner, which has revealed the vast majority of sales to date have been into education.

According to the market watcher, sales of the sub-$300 devices are on course to jump by 79 per cent this year to 5.2 million units before almost trebling to hit 14.4 million units in 2017.

Last year Microsoft launched its ‘Scroogled' campaign to dismiss the Chromebook as "not a PC".

The first Chromebooks, which run Google Chrome OS and mainly use the cloud for storage, were launched back in 2011 to fill the void left by netbooks, with HP, Lenovo and Dell all since joining the party.

But, judging from Gartner's figures, Chromebooks have so far hardly set the world alight outside their core US education stronghold, despite an awareness push last year on this side of the pond.

Gartner estimates that the education sector accounted for nearly 85 per cent of Chromebook sales in 2013, with 82 per cent of the 2.9 million units shipped last year sold in North America.

The analyst said Chromebooks "will have a place" in businesses for specific workers, such as staff in banking, financial services, estate agents and hotel receptionists.

"So far, businesses have looked at Chromebooks, but not bought many," said Gartner principal analyst Isabelle Durant.

"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' appeal is also likely to improve as more users work collaboratively in the cloud, Gartner added.

Unsurprisingly, Samsung and Acer bossed the market in 2013 with a markeshare of 64.9 per cent and 21.4 per cent respectively. While Samsung was dominant in the education market, Acer gnawed out a niche at the entry level by using Intel rather than ARM-based CPUs to woo price-sensitive consumers.

Next came HP and Lenovo on 6.8 and 6.7 per cent share, respectively. HP - which is the only vendor to launch a Chromebook with a 14-inch screen - has a "competitive advantage" in the Chromebook market going forward due to its large installed customer base in business and education, Gartner said, while Lenovo's rugged models will make it a hit with primary and secondary school pupils. Dell had a measly 0.3 per cent share of the market.

Chromebooks will remain a niche market during the next five years, Gartner said, with vendors needing to offer better feature that address cloud-based usage patterns to reach a wider audience. This would include faster connectivity, faster memory access, faster and larger solid-state drives and strong user support in the education, business and consumer segments.

"Making a competitive Chromebook is not just a matter of hardware and price; what is most important is to show how the device's cloud-based architecture provides genuine advantages to users," said Durand.