Google’s cloudy Chromebooks must be doing well. The company has just extended their availability to six new countries, namely Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, and doubled the number of Best Buy stores in the U.S. in which the Chrome OS laptops are sold.
According to a blog post early on Tuesday, Samsung’s Chromebook has been a best-seller on Amazon U.S. for 150 days, and over 10 percent of laptop sales in the UK electricals stores Currys and PC World have been Chromebooks.
Chromebooks go on sale from Tuesday in the aforementioned countries, where Google will also be pushing the devices on businesses and schools. Availability will differ somewhat from country to country, although generally the Acer and Samsung Chromebooks are on sale now, with HP’s effort on its way soon.
I get the feeling that Google has spotted a gap in the market here. At the size and price point we’re talking about (roughly between $ 250-$ 350), people will most likely be buying and using Chromebooks as they would have netbooks. With the manufacturers having more-or-less abandoned the netbook market, those who want a cheap, portable, notebook-format device may very well find themselves looking in Chrome OS’s direction.
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