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The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

forbes.com

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Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#21

Post by bchandel »

undoware wrote: post #13

The Curious Case of Forbes: Does anyone there use something OTHER than Windows? Seriously, guys. You reek of dad. Your ability to predict and understand the tech market is undercut by the demographic of reporters needed to furnish reporting to your markets. This is why you all understand Burberry a lot better than Blackberry, and that a lot better than any of the devices that have come out since the Bush administrati…

So pointing out huge flaws in measuring things is acting like dad now? You think 2013 was the year of the Linux desktop?

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#22

Post by ioddly »

na85 wrote: post #3

I don't think it's all that surprising. If my daily routine consisted mostly of email and simple documents (i.e. not code) I'd buy one in a heartbeat. They're great little machines. I had a chance to play with the Pixel version and it's really nice. Cold boots in something like 7 seconds. Chiclet-style keyboard, nice touchpad, etc. Truthfully I'm not sure my next laptop won't be a chromebook anyways: Surely it's poss…

I'm getting along very well with an HP Chromebook 14 running crouton. I do programming and watch videos and other stuff without involving The Cloud. Not an option for the average consumer but for HN readers, an intriguing option.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#23

Post by azakai »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #14

The money quote: NPD’s numbers would have us believe Chromebook’s were nearly 50 times more popular (9.6% of the market vs. 0.2%) in a segment that grew 25% from last year. That’s rather remarkable as it would suggest sales increased perhaps sixtyfold. What else grew 60x this year, besides bitcoin and chromebooks?

The quote is skeptical of those numbers - "would have us believe" is the indicator of that.

The entire article investigates whether the 60x number from NPD is plausible or not.

The article's conclusion seems to be: perhaps in one segment of the market, but it isn't clear which segment, yet at the same time it is clear that sales are in fact rising to some extent. One measurement shows a 10x increase, much of it very recent. So something interesting is going on, but we don't quite know what or how much.

The best way to answer this would be to get actual sales numbers from Google, and stop guessing using indirect sources.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#24

Post by adricnet »

We bought one for her mom. While we won't know for a few months how that experiment works out I was pleased with my experience with it while setting it up for her (adding account, bookmarks, and fooling around). I could write on it, especially as I use Google's office applications more and other web apps, ssh for the rest.

I think the Desktop Apps available in the Chrome Web Store and the accompanying Chrome Apps icon in my Mac's Dock and Windows taskbar are much more interesting developments and I imagine Apple and Microsoft are rather more concerned about that than the netbooks. This is not the first intrusion of browser based applications onto desktop computers (Prism ,etc) but it certainly the boldest and works quite smoothly.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#25

Post by derefr »

kumarm wrote: post #18

I Bought 2 Chrome books. 1 for my daughter. Only purpose she can use is Gmail (email and keep in touch with Aunt's and other relatives overseas). Occasionally she uses youtube and her school website. 1 for My Dad to read new papers online. Both of them love it and its the only computer they use. I am sure none of them show up in any stats. Edit: I must add Why I bought Chromebooks for both of them. Their uses cases:…

In the first situation, why a Chromebook instead of, say, a tablet? Or an iPod Touch, even? Children don't tend to get the same sort of benefit from full "hard" keyboards that adults do, and there are devices cheaper than Chromebooks that can be similarly locked down.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#26

Post by kumarm »

derefr wrote: post #25
kumarm wrote: post #18

I Bought 2 Chrome books. 1 for my daughter. Only purpose she can use is Gmail (email and keep in touch with Aunt's and other relatives overseas). Occasionally she uses youtube and her school website. 1 for My Dad to read new papers online. Both of them love it and its the only computer they use. I am sure none of them show up in any stats. Edit: I must add Why I bought Chromebooks for both of them. Their uses cases:…

In the first situation, why a Chromebook instead of, say, a tablet? Or an iPod Touch, even? Children don't tend to get the same sort of benefit from full "hard" keyboards that adults do, and there are devices cheaper than Chromebooks that can be similarly locked down.

Hard to find a stable tablet with big enough screen for 299$.

Also tablet is a distraction since kids would want to play games as soon as they have one in their hands.

Also starting in 2nd Grade (At least in my area) kids are taught typing on computer (Home Rose?).

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#27

Post by sounds »

azakai wrote: post #23
andrewljohnson wrote: post #14

The money quote: NPD’s numbers would have us believe Chromebook’s were nearly 50 times more popular (9.6% of the market vs. 0.2%) in a segment that grew 25% from last year. That’s rather remarkable as it would suggest sales increased perhaps sixtyfold. What else grew 60x this year, besides bitcoin and chromebooks?

The quote is skeptical of those numbers - "would have us believe" is the indicator of that. The entire article investigates whether the 60x number from NPD is plausible or not. The article's conclusion seems to be: perhaps in one segment of the market, but it isn't clear which segment, yet at the same time it is clear that sales are in fact rising to some extent. One measurement shows a 10x increase, much of it very…

While Google is unlikely to disclose actual sales figures, their marketing department likely has made some effort to figure out what is happening.

My (anecdotal, N=1) evidence is in seeing people who were frustrated by the iPad. The iPad really did a huge amount of volume and I'm hearing from a few people that they wanted something more like a Chromebook.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#28

Post by bane »

corresation wrote: post #7

While this is a rehash of exactly the pattern we saw as Android grew ("Shipments not sales. Haven't seen one in a coffee shop. No one in my family. Some web stat source says..."), with the same players regurgitating their old hits, I do wonder why people trust StatCounter so much? StatCounter relies upon subject sites adding a bit of code that reports back to StatCounter, giving them their metrics. Curious, I inspect…

> Haven't seen one in a coffee shop. No one in my family. Some web stat source says..."), with the same players regurgitating their old hits, I do wonder why people trust StatCounter so much?

And what has the actual result been over time? Are we looking for confirmation anecdotes in the wrong places? It seems to me that many of those early stats turned out to be true. For example, Android devices dominates the global smartphone market at over 80%. That's either a lot of shipped but not sold devices sitting on shelves filling up every inch of floor space in retail stores around the world, or this kind of stat tracking has some validity.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#29

Post by thirdsight »

Osiris wrote: post #16

My daughter is using my CR-48 beta Chromebook. She watches Youtube videos, uses Wikipedia, writes stories in Google Docs, and plays Flash-based web games (which are admittedly quite slow on the CR-48's hardware). There's really not much she's missing out on. I don't have to worry about the drive crashing (docs are saved in Google Drive), her pressing a button she shouldn't, or downloading malware. It's a really great…

That's fine until your Internet connection is down for 4 days and she's due an assignment that needs to be emailed or printed.

The device is a lemon then.

At least with a normal Mac/PC you can plug a printer in it.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#30

Post by bchandel »

seabrookmx wrote: post #10
j2kun wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daily routine consists of code and I still enjoy my chromebook. It has ssh, so I don't need to wipe everything to do the little bit of coding I need to when I'm on the go. It's not a replacement for my desktop machine, but still worth the $250 bucks.

Using crouton you don't need to wipe it to run Linux. It installs Debian or Ubuntu into a chroot. I agree with the SSH sentiment though.

Crouton needs dev mode and ChromeOS wipes your local files when you enable it.
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