Google HP Chromebook 11 lands in Australia
First, it was Samsung, then Acer, and now HP has joined the chromebook bandwagon, releasing the HP Chromebook 11 in the Australian market — almost two years since the first chromebooks went on sale in June 2011.
Designed for business users in mind, the 11-inch laptop boasts that its sleek design can fit easily into a bag or purse and has more than six hours of battery life, which can be recharged using the juice of an Android phone or tablet through a micro-USB connection.
However, like most pieces of tech equipment, the initial market release never comes without any hiccups. In fact, HP copped slack from users who were reporting on an overheating power adaptor when the HP Chrome OS-based ultraportable laptop was first launched in the US in October last year. Of course, the company was quick to fix the issue.
However, despite Google's pitch on its website that its Chromebooks are "ready when you are", "gets everything done", and "plays nicely with others", initial statistics suggest that chromebooks are struggling to sell.
NetMarketShare first reported back in April 2013 that the percentage of web traffic from chromebooks was roughly two one hundredths of 1 percent, a figure too small to earn a place on its reports.
Not long after, IDC released similar statistics that showed chromebooks only made up 1 percent of total worldwide PC/tablet shipments for the third quarter of 2013, compared to tablets (36 percent) and PCs (63 percent).
The laptop has attracted a handful of enthusiasts who are enjoying Google's all-the-time cloud access at a low market price, which was justified by figures released by NPD Group in December 2013. The statistics showed that in the US commercial channel, chromebooks accounted for 21 percent of all notebook sales.
"The market for personal computing devices in commercial markets continues to shift and change," said Stephen Baker, NPD vice president of industry analysis.
"New products like Chromebooks, and re-imagined items like Windows tablets, are now supplementing the revitalisation that iPads started in personal computing devices. It is no accident that we are seeing the fruits of this change in the commercial markets as business and institutional buyers exploit the flexibility inherent in the new range of choices now open to them."