Chromebooks Outsell Macs For the First Time In the US (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: Google's low-cost Chromebooks outsold Apple's range of Macs for the first time in the U.S. recently. IDC analyst Linn Huang confirmed the milestone to The Verge. "Chrome OS overtook Mac OS in the US in terms of shipments for the first time in 1Q16," says Huang. "Chromebooks are still largely a US K-12 story." IDC estimates Apple's U.S. Mac shipments to be around 1.76 million in the latest quarter, meaning Dell, HP, and Lenovo sold nearly 2 million Chromebooks in Q1 combined. Chromebooks have been extremely popular in US schools, and it's clear from IDC's comments the demand is driving US shipments. Outside of the US, it's still unclear exactly how well Google's low-cost laptops are doing. Most data from market research firms like IDC and Gartner focuses solely on Google's wins in the US.

Comments

Chromebook is great

[halivar]

The low cost with touch screen tells me all the other laptops are extremely marked up. My only disappointment is the lack of apps for it. But for simple Google Docs work, it can't be beat for the dollar.

Re: Chromebook is great

[ColdWetDog]

Come now. Anyone with an Internet connection is ALREADY brainwashed vis a vis Google. Except for us curmudgeons, the vast majority of the planet thinks that the Internet IS some unholy amalgamation of Google and Facebook.

Re:Chromebook is great

[Solandri]

Chromebooks lack:

• RAM. About 1-2 GB instead of 4 GB standard (although it's been crawling up).
• Storage. Usually 16 GB of flash, instead of a 128+ GB SSD or 1+ TB HDD.
• A powerful processor. Most are ARM-based, though a few used the Intel Atom line (which Intel recently killed off).
• Windows.

A large part of the higher price of laptops are due to the last two. Based on what ARM SoCs cost (about $5-$15), Intel's markup on its CPUs is several hundred dollars. And we all know what Windows costs. Those two markups come out to about $200-$300. Add in $35 for a HDD and that's pretty much the price difference between Chromebooks and low-end laptops.

So no, laptops aren't marked up. Intel and Microsoft just make out like bandits from each laptop sale (just Intel for Macs).

Re:Time to

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

The Mac is not simply a PC. It's a PC with a soldered CPU and soldered RAM, sold at twice the price of an equivalent PC.

Sent from my 2010 Mac mini.

Re:What a strange comparison

[Solandri]

After all the attempts to include tablets in PC sales figures to bolster Apple's standing, I figure turnabout is fair play. Having helped set up my nephew's Chromebook (sis wanted parental controls), aside from the inability to run generic apps I'd say it's more PC-like than a tablet. The physical keyboard goes a long way, and most people spend their computer time in a browser anyway.

The iPads in education were probably a kickback scam. The Chromebooks actually seem useful. A part of my nephew's homework is found online (I suppose it could be made into an interactive program, but a website allows easier control of distribution and updates). More work for IT, a lot less work for teachers and parents. They cost about 1/3 to 1/2 what an iPad does. And the lack of a store discourages kids from trying to hack it to install Angry Birds. Course they can browse to all sorts of websites (Google needs to improve the parental controls - you can eventually restrict it, but the process isn't trivial), but they can also do that on a tablet's browser.

If you think about it, Chromebooks have more or less accomplished what OLPC set out to do - driven the price of a production computer through the floor so that even people in developing countries could afford one. OLPC's actual production cost was about $490 each. (And please, no ranting about 16 GB of flash being "limiting." My first computer had 32 kB of RAM, my first laptop had a 20 MB HDD. 16 GB is enormous. OLPC only had 4-8 GB of flash storage. A compressed version of Wikipedia is 12 GB.)