Google's Chromebooks continue to make inroads in education, Gartner says
After a slow start, the market for laptops running Google's Chrome OS --?known as Chromebooks --?has begun to pick up steam, new data indicates, with education customers representing a sizable majority of orders.
Google's high-end Chromebook Pixel, which retails for $999.
Google and its partners could sell as many as 7.3 million Chromebooks in 2015, according to Gartner. Some 72 percent of those will go to the education sector, where they will compete directly with Apple's iPad for technology dollars.
"Since the first model launched in mid-2011, Google's Chromebook has seen success mainly in the education segment across all regions," Gartner analyst Isabelle Durand said in a release. "In 2014, the education sector purchased 72 percent of Chromebooks in EMEA, 69 percent in Asia/Pacific, and 60 percent in the U.S. (see Table 1)."
The low-cost, often low-powered Chromebooks have not caught on in the enterprise to nearly the same degree, and consumers too have largely passed Chromebooks over. Gartner believes that may be set to change, however, as the general public warms to the idea of a cloud-centric world.
"The major factors that affect the adoption of Chromebooks by consumers remain the connectivity issue in emerging markets, but also the ability for users to understand and get used to cloud-based applications, and keep content in the cloud and ecosystem," Durand added.
Taiwanese electronics firm Acer is now the largest maker of Chromebooks, followed by Samsung and HP.
Google's high-end Chromebook Pixel, which retails for $999.
Google and its partners could sell as many as 7.3 million Chromebooks in 2015, according to Gartner. Some 72 percent of those will go to the education sector, where they will compete directly with Apple's iPad for technology dollars.
"Since the first model launched in mid-2011, Google's Chromebook has seen success mainly in the education segment across all regions," Gartner analyst Isabelle Durand said in a release. "In 2014, the education sector purchased 72 percent of Chromebooks in EMEA, 69 percent in Asia/Pacific, and 60 percent in the U.S. (see Table 1)."
The low-cost, often low-powered Chromebooks have not caught on in the enterprise to nearly the same degree, and consumers too have largely passed Chromebooks over. Gartner believes that may be set to change, however, as the general public warms to the idea of a cloud-centric world.
"The major factors that affect the adoption of Chromebooks by consumers remain the connectivity issue in emerging markets, but also the ability for users to understand and get used to cloud-based applications, and keep content in the cloud and ecosystem," Durand added.
Taiwanese electronics firm Acer is now the largest maker of Chromebooks, followed by Samsung and HP.
Comments
Apparently, the Chromebooks are far better than iPads (if there is a comparison) for administrators in schools. Also, multiple logins and so on.
The $199 HP Stream looks like a good choice for schools, but runs Windows and we know about the security issues and all of that and the cost there.
Chromebooks are great for schools and our district recently bought thousands of them.
As long as morons and companies like Pearson continue to call the shots things will never improve.
The best devices were eMates, but Apple couldn't afford to keep making those.
We still have almost 1 iPad cart per school, but they are close to impossible to manage. Students aren't supervised with the devices resulting in a hodgepodge of configurations per cart. When that rare need for them is present, a staff member is needed to babysit each device to ensure they are setup properly and have the apps they need.
Chromebooks on the other hand have next to zero maintenance. A building tech can "re-image" them in seconds, never needing application installs, and they work well for general computing devices. We have roughly 500 iOS devices in our district spanning a length of time from 2010 to 2013. We haven't boughten iPads in bulk since the iPad 4. We have reached almost 3k Chromebooks with 15 more carts on order. The hardest part about Chromebook deployment is turning them on to gather the mac addresses, but even that is painless. We've deployed several Chromebox labs as well.
My biggest concern however is the impact of this lightweight OS on student technological knowledge. As some of the lower wealth school are starting to use Chromebooks in technical heavy classes.
NO THEY DONT!
All these computers in primary and secondary education in the US, and our kids still score below almost every other modern nation. Do you think we should be concerned about which OS they are using? Kids in the US need less technology and more emphasis on dedicated study, not just watching a computer screen. I think they need to put down the cell phone. Every cell phone should be in airplane mode while at school. Every kid having a computer at school is just baby sitting. They are supposed to be engaged with the teacher and the class while in the classroom. They can use a computer to do their homework, at home, or the library. They only need computers in computer science classes.
Now get off my lawn.
My children go to a school with a combination of chromebooks, macs (for the teachers and workstations in the classrooms), and some iPads.
My son has a 13" chromebook (acer) and it is a fantastic machine at $200. The part I like most about it is it's glaring weakness for the majority of its' detractors - it's inability to run anything that's not on the net. This means no games, no distractions (other than the web-based games out there). It is also very easy to administer, and battery life has been over 6 hours per charge.
I will get my daughter one as well but she demands that it be pink . . .
Of course, my son saw my new 12" macbook and is a mite jealous ;-D
I can see this, schools do not want to be bothered with maintiain computers, they generally are technology neophites. My kids usually ended up helping teachers use the technologies in the class room. Most kids who grew up on technology know this stuff better than most of the people teaching them. This is part of the reason kids no longer respect the average teacher especially when kids know more than they do when it comes to technology. My kids come home all the time and tell me about how the teacher or the schools have not clue what they are doing. BTW my kids' schools are still using PC and they just updated recently. The IT depart wanted nothing to do with Apple or Chrome books, beause they see them as loosing their jobs.
The crome books make most school's lives simple, it does a limited number of things, it is good enough and simple they do not want much more than that. The thing is Crome Books will never make it to the University and Company Level. As much as Google wants everthing in the cloud there are things that are still far better on a standalone computer. One simple thing, when the network goes down I can still do work on my computer. I can also work while on a plane and no need to be connected.
9to5Mac claims Apple is working on multi-user for iPad as well as split screen multitasking. They may introduce it with iOS 9 or when the 12" iPad "Pro" launches. I will have a big grin on my face when they do considering a number of posters here have said Apple would never do multi user because they want more iPad sales. Clearly Apple knows they need to do more than new chip and thinner design to make iPad compelling. Plus they've gone about as far as they can in the thinness department anyway. One thing I don't like about my Air 2 is the sound vibration. I don't remember feeling that with the Air 1.
Now that I disagree about kids just need to be focus and dicipline and this is definitely missing.
However, my kids' school used computers to the kids advantage. My kids have lots of skills which most people never get until they work. They know how to use spreadsheets to analysis data and they can use Power Point to make presentation, My kids have more time standing up in front of people doing a presentation than I did after working for a number of years. They have some really valuabale skills but I know our schools are not the norm since they did make a big effort to get kids to use technology to improve the learning experience and it shows. They did not use computers to teach kids with games and skill programs but used them a tool to add to the learning.
I can see this, schools do not want to be bothered with maintiain computers, they generally are technology neophites. My kids usually ended up helping teachers use the technologies in the class room. Most kids who grew up on technology know this stuff better than most of the people teaching them. This is part of the reason kids no longer respect the average teacher especially when kids know more than they do when it comes to technology. My kids come home all the time and tell me about how the teacher or the schools have not clue what they are doing. BTW my kids' schools are still using PC and they just updated recently. The IT depart wanted nothing to do with Apple or Chrome books, beause they see them as loosing their jobs.
The crome books make most school's lives simple, it does a limited number of things, it is good enough and simple they do not want much more than that. The thing is Crome Books will never make it to the University and Company Level. As much as Google wants everthing in the cloud there are things that are still far better on a standalone computer. One simple thing, when the network goes down I can silll do work on my computer. I can also work while on a plane and no need to be connected.
That's a huge misconception about ChromeBooks, quite a few apps for Chrome OS can be used offline. You can also install pretty much any every Android app that's available in the Play Store. I have MS Office for Android for instance. Also since I have a LTE enabled ChromeBook I hardly ever loose connection, when I fly I just use the planes network. I now use a Google Pixel as my main notebook, it's a fantastic machine.
The part I like most about it is it's glaring weakness for the majority of its' detractors - it's inability to run anything that's not on the net. This means no games, no distractions (other than the web-based games out there).
This is the big problem from a software development standpoint. ChromeOS can really only run glorified web apps. Even apps written for Android are fairly difficult to bring over to ChromeOS (and both of those are Google technologies). Never mind apps written for other platforms like iOS, Windows, Mac. So you'll never have the wealth of well-integrated, well-designed apps that other platforms have.
Now that I disagree about kids just need to be focus and dicipline and this is definitely missing.
Sorry, discipline was probably the wrong word. I was thinking more emphasis on dedicated study, not just watching a computer screen.
This is the big problem from a software development standpoint. ChromeOS can really only run glorified web apps. Even apps written for Android are fairly difficult to bring over to ChromeOS (and both of those are Google technologies). Never mind apps written for other platforms like iOS, Windows, Mac. So you'll never have the wealth of well-integrated, well-designed apps that other platforms have.
Bringing Android apps over to ChromeOS is as easy as pushing a single button, convert. Have you ever actually used a ChromeBook. Web apps have gotten so good that I actually prefer them now, including software development, check out CodeEnvy or Cloud 9. I program in Open CL, C ++, PHP, Cuda and Python, never once have I felt that I needed to use Windows or OSX to get my work done. I also have Linux installed in a Chroot under ChromeOS so I can have a LAMP server. I hardly ever use it though as these web IDE's offer the same functionality, you get a user directory under a remote server with everything you could possibly want for Dev work. I don't think you actually know what's out there now, the web app landscape has made huge strides in the last two years. You no longer need a traditional OS to get real work done, I even have Photoshop.
I don't think you actually know what's out there now, the web app landscape has made huge strides in the last two years. You no longer need a traditional OS to get real work done, I even have Photoshop.
ok, can you tell me then how a web app can access the camera on a device and show a live feed of it? I was researching that the other day and came up with nothing. I could only find a way to grab still images from the camera.
Their actually really good, I have a Google Pixel II (i7, 16GB, 128GB) and a little HP 11 LTE (Celeron, 4GB, 32GB) v2.
Bringing Android apps over to ChromeOS is as easy as pushing a single button, convert.
A single button in what development tool? Android Studio? All I've found documentation on is the ARC Welder tool (which still shows as being beta and only runs on ChromeOS afaict).