Chromebooks take off – What are they?
Expectations for Chromebook shipments in 2Q are over 11m units, a high for the product category and will mark the first time this subset of the notebook segment will hit the 25% share. COVID-19 is the cause as students move to home based education that requires at least a connection to the internet. As Chrome books are the lower priced alternative to Windows based notebooks, during the epidemic, with finances tight, they represent a viable alternative to relatively expensive notebooks.
That said, what are Chromebooks? Are they really notebooks or are they something else? From the standpoint of broad consumer electronics categories, Chromebooks are notebooks, but they differ from most notebooks in that they are based entirely on the Chrome OS and web browser (Google, and the Android (Google) and iOS (Apple-AAPL) operating systems used on most smartphones.
Windows based laptops come in a broad range of feature sets and prices that can run as high as $6,500 (ASUS (2457.TT) Gaming Laptop) and as low as $195 (Hewlett Packard - HPE 14”), while Chromebooks tend to stay within a $200 to $400 range. These lower prices come with some advantages and disadvantages, but Chromebooks are not true notebooks in the sense that they do not operate as a repository for information or data processing, but closer to what used to be termed “dumb terminals” back in the days of early distributed computing.
Chromebooks are internet connection devices that look similar to notebooks but tend to have lower resolution and slightly smaller displays and relatively little storage space. As their function is to connect you to the internet and therefore cloud storage, the concept is that you do not need to store data on the device itself, but in the cloud. This certainly is in keeping with those that have grown up with smartphones where ypu are constantly battling to free up space by shifting endless pictures of friends and family to the cloud, but it does not work well for those that need instant access to their data and might not have a good internet connection, such as in a vehicle or train.
The other issue that faces Chromebook users is applications. Since they are based on the Chrome OS, common Windows applications like Excel, Word, and Outlook are not available and substitute applications are far less robust and not always compatible with existing data. The library of Windows based applications is almost endless, while those for Chrome OS are more oriented toward working on-line, which is ideal for students, who would be streaming classes and writing relatively short documents that could be locally or cloud stored, but not for more complex work with heavier applications that need significant computing power, higher resolution, and internal storage.
Chromebooks do tend to be smaller and lighter than notebooks and the Chrome OS uses between 20% and 25% of the internal resources that Windows does, so there are advantages that will continue once students and others return to classroom based learning, but the question remains as to whether notebook vendors, who are suddenly focused on the segment, will remain so over time. We look at tablets, which were originally supposed to replace notebooks, and see that panel shipment growth has not grown substantially over the last few years as other alternatives, primarily smartphones continued to improve, and we expect the only reason Chromebooks would see growth beyond the current epidemic, would be if application development made them a more competitive alternative to more costly notebooks.
That said, what are Chromebooks? Are they really notebooks or are they something else? From the standpoint of broad consumer electronics categories, Chromebooks are notebooks, but they differ from most notebooks in that they are based entirely on the Chrome OS and web browser (Google, and the Android (Google) and iOS (Apple-AAPL) operating systems used on most smartphones.
Windows based laptops come in a broad range of feature sets and prices that can run as high as $6,500 (ASUS (2457.TT) Gaming Laptop) and as low as $195 (Hewlett Packard - HPE 14”), while Chromebooks tend to stay within a $200 to $400 range. These lower prices come with some advantages and disadvantages, but Chromebooks are not true notebooks in the sense that they do not operate as a repository for information or data processing, but closer to what used to be termed “dumb terminals” back in the days of early distributed computing.
Chromebooks are internet connection devices that look similar to notebooks but tend to have lower resolution and slightly smaller displays and relatively little storage space. As their function is to connect you to the internet and therefore cloud storage, the concept is that you do not need to store data on the device itself, but in the cloud. This certainly is in keeping with those that have grown up with smartphones where ypu are constantly battling to free up space by shifting endless pictures of friends and family to the cloud, but it does not work well for those that need instant access to their data and might not have a good internet connection, such as in a vehicle or train.
The other issue that faces Chromebook users is applications. Since they are based on the Chrome OS, common Windows applications like Excel, Word, and Outlook are not available and substitute applications are far less robust and not always compatible with existing data. The library of Windows based applications is almost endless, while those for Chrome OS are more oriented toward working on-line, which is ideal for students, who would be streaming classes and writing relatively short documents that could be locally or cloud stored, but not for more complex work with heavier applications that need significant computing power, higher resolution, and internal storage.
Chromebooks do tend to be smaller and lighter than notebooks and the Chrome OS uses between 20% and 25% of the internal resources that Windows does, so there are advantages that will continue once students and others return to classroom based learning, but the question remains as to whether notebook vendors, who are suddenly focused on the segment, will remain so over time. We look at tablets, which were originally supposed to replace notebooks, and see that panel shipment growth has not grown substantially over the last few years as other alternatives, primarily smartphones continued to improve, and we expect the only reason Chromebooks would see growth beyond the current epidemic, would be if application development made them a more competitive alternative to more costly notebooks.
Tablet Panel Shipments - Source: SCMR LLC, IHS, Company Data
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