I’ve known it for more than a decade but folks in USA are a bit slow to change… Today, the Vice-president of industry analysis at NPD stated, “Building on last year’s surprising strength, Chrome’s unit strength ahead of this year’s education buying season shows how it has become a legitimate third platform alongside Windows and Mac OS X and iOS”
Of course he’s mostly concerned with unit sales (“For the three weeks ending June 7, Chromebook sales made up more than 40 percent of Commercial Channel notebook sales, a significant bump from the 35 percent year-to-date.”) and I’m on about performance. I’ll grant that 40% share is wonderful but GNU/Linux could have done that years ago with the right OEMs and retailers involved. It took that train a long time to form.
GNU/Linux is a winner for Google in combination with Google’s cloud and browser. Just as M$ did years ago, Google is sweeping competition from the market but this time they are doing it with performance, not exclusive dealing. What a difference FLOSS makes.
See NPD: Chromebooks Lead a Strong First Half for U.S. Commercial Channel PC Sales.
