Chromebook Sales vs. Web Traffic Share

Gregg Keizer, reporting for Computerworld:

Chromebooks’ holiday success at Amazon was duplicated elsewhere during the year, according to the NPD Group, which tracked U.S. PC sales to commercial buyers such as businesses, schools, government and other organizations.

By NPD’s tallies, Chromebooks accounted for 21% of all U.S. commercial notebook sales in 2013 through November, and 10% of all computers and tablets. Both shares were up massively from 2012; last year, Chromebooks accounted for an almost-invisible two-tenths of one percent of all computer and tablet sales.

If these reports are right, we should soon see a corresponding surge in web traffic share for ChromeOS. But I’m having trouble finding a web traffic source that even counts Chrome OS as an entity. Wikimedia’s stats should be representative of the web at large, but they don’t count Chrome OS. (They also count Android as a Linux distribution, which humorously inflates the share for “Linux”.) NetMarketShare doesn’t count Chrome OS separately (perhaps they count it under “Linux”, which they peg at 1.56 percent), and neither does StatCounter. Chitika hasn’t reported on Chrome OS since March. If anyone can find a good source for Chrome OS web share, let me know.

(Daring Fireball’s stats are clearly not representative of the general public, and surely vastly under-represent Chrome OS, but for what it’s worth, Google Analytics puts Chrome OS at 0.08 percent of visits in the last 30 days. Also worth noting: iOS nipped past Mac OS X for the first time that I’ve noticed, 41.62 to 41.10 percent.)

Update: StatCounter does have data for Chrome OS.

★ Saturday, 28 December 2013