Chromebooks Gaining Popularity Within Businesses
The lightweight, ultra durable Chromebook line-up is beginning to spark the interest of business technology teams all around the world. Research firm Gartner mentions that 2.9 million Chromebooks were sold in 2013 with 85 percent of the inventory going to educational organizations. Research shows that Chromebooks could sell as many as 5.2 million units in 2014. A new report by Gartner mentions that the Chromebook is expected to see a spike in sales as organizations look for alternatives to buying and maintaining laptops for their employees.
“So far, businesses have looked at Chromebooks, but not bought many. 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” explains Principal Analyst Isabelle Durand.
The popular Samsung Chromebook is priced around $249 MSRP. This base price is half the normal costs of a laptop. Other manufacturers of the Chromebook are taking notice and they are ramping up their efforts to become the Chromebook manufacturer of choice. According to Gartner, nearly 4 out of every 5 Chromebooks sold is manufactured by Samsung. This isn’t deterring manufacturers such as Acer as they recently debut the Chromebook 13. This Chromebook features an NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor and the book is designed to be used continuously for 13 hours between charges.
The biggest selling point for businesses is that the Chromebook does not leave sensitive company data on the hard drive. Large corporations fight the battle of having to encrypt the local hard drive and enforce rigid physical security policies to ensure that a laptop with company data isn’t stolen. As businesses learn more about the Chromebook and how all of the data is stored in the cloud, Gartner predicts that the Chromebook will begin finding its way into businesses with financial organizations being one of the early adopters.
