After schools, Google eyes new users for Chromebook

NEW YORK — The Google Chromebook, a type of stripped-down laptop, isn’t a practical mobile device for many people — mostly because it basically turns into an expensive paperweight whenever it can’t find a Wi-Fi connection.

Yet Chromebooks have defied expectations and made major inroads in an unexpected environment — schools.

In retrospect, that shouldn’t be too surprising. Chromebooks are cheap and easy to manage, making them popular with budget-constrained schools with limited tech-support staff. School boards in Waterloo Region also have been rolling out programs to give students Chromebooks.

Google doesn’t want to stop at the education market. It’s releasing new models in partnership with Samsung that are designed to appeal to a broader range of consumers. They have several tablet-like features, including a stylus, touch controls and a 360-degree hinge that allows you to turn the screen face-up.

Google and its manufacturing partners are trying to shed the Chromebook’s perception as underperforming budget devices.

For personal computers and tablets, Chromebook’s share of the U.S. education market was 49 per cent last year, up from 40 per cent in 2015 and nine per cent in 2013, according to IDC figures released this week.

But education accounts for just 14 per cent of the 110 million devices shipped in the U.S. last year — and Chromebooks make up just nine per cent of that broader total. Their numbers are also low abroad, even in schools.

The Chromebook’s popularity in U.S. education is also largely limited to grades K-12, analysts say. Macs and Windows laptops are still dominant on college campuses.

Chromebooks use a lightweight operating system designed to get people online faster, without having to wait around for the computer to start up. Much of the heavy lifting on Chromebooks gets done on Google’s remote servers, so Chromebooks themselves don’t need fast chips or lots of storage.

But what constrains consumers can actually be liberating in education. Most kids don’t need laptops on the bus or other locations where they can’t connect to Wi-Fi. And they don’t miss business software like Microsoft Office; Google’s online apps for documents and spreadsheets do just fine for homework.

“What surprised us was how quickly it took off in education,” said Kan Liu, who oversees Chromebooks at Google.

Google is trying to make Chromebooks more palatable by letting them run Android apps designed for phones and tablets.