Google reps say they like to refrain from hype and boosterism, but its latest blog post made a big claim: "Chromebooks are the best selling device in the U.S. this year," according to an unreleased IDC report on the K-12 market. Without hard numbers, there was plenty of reason for skepticism. But IDC analyst, Rajani Singh offered a sneak peek at a few details:
According to IDC's findings, which includes research on suppliers and manufacturers, roughly 713,000 Chromebooks were shipped for the U.S. K-12 market during Q3 2014. Among Chromebook manufacturers, Acer tops the chart with 240,000 devices shipped, followed by Samsung (174,000) and HP (127,000).
By comparison, Apple shipped 702,000 iPads, accounting for roughly 85% of all tablets shipped during this period. Singh noted that this number is a 4% drop in Apple's market share of K-12 tablets from Q2 2014.
"The third quarter is especially important," says Singh. "It captures a major portion of technology purchases that schools make in the year."
Google is looking to grow its education presence around the globe as well. This week, it invited dozens of education minsters and leaders from 18 countries for its second Global Education Symposium to learn about the Google hardware and cloud ecosystem and see how they are used at Milpitas Unified School District.
