Global Chromebook Sales Set to Hit 7.3 Million Units in 2015: Gartner

Chromebooks are computers powered by Google Inc's Chrome Operating System, designed to be used primarily online.

Gartner said its sales estimate was an increase of 27 percent from 2014, when the education industry accounted for 72 percent of sales.

Despite an interest about Chromebooks among small and medium businesses, demand from businesses was yet to pick up, Gartner said.

North America was the biggest market in 2014, accounting for 84 percent sales. While EMEA fetched 11 percent sales, Asia pacific contributed less than 3 percent, with demand in Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Earlier this month, Google in partnership with Xolo and Nexian launched two new Chromebooks in India - both priced at Rs. 12,999.

The Xolo Chromebook features 11.6-inch display with 200 nit brightness, an unknown resolution and is powered by a Rockchip 3288 processor clubbed with ARM Mali 760 quad-core GPU and 2GB of RAM. Featuring a 16GB eMMC storage, the laptop includes a HD (720x1280 pixels) resolution webcam for recording videos and video chatting. Connectivity features of the Xolo Chromebook include two USB 2.0 ports, SD card reader, HDMI, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

Xolo claims that its Chromebook can run for up to 10 hours on a single charge. The laptop measures 290x205x17.9mm and weighs 1.15 kgs. The Nexian Air Chromebook features nearly the same specifications as the Xolo Chromebook. The Mountain View giant also announced that in the coming months, new Chrombooks from Asus (including the Chromebook Flip and Chromebook C201) and Samsung will also be made available in India.

Written with inputs from Reuters