If the planned rebellion against Microsoft Windows at next month's Consumer Electronics Show wasn't enough to keep Redmond up at night, the latest notebook sales figures from The NPD Group will likely do the job. The consumer market research firm found Chromebooks accounted for 21 percent of all notebook sales and nearly 10 percent of all computer sales through November.
Elsewhere, tablets captured more than 22 percent of all personal computing device sales sold through the end of last month. Broken down further, Windows tablet sales nearly tripped compared to the year-ago period while Android tablet sales were up more than 160 percent. Looking at the bigger picture, however, Apple still dominated the market with their iPad accounting for 59 percent of the tablet market.
Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD, said the market for personal computing devices in commercial markets continues to shift and change. He noted that new products like Chromebooks and reimagined items like Windows tablets are now supplementing the revitalization that iPads started in personal computing devices.
The statistics reflect what we've been hearing from other outlets as well. Last week, Amazon published their holiday best sellers list where two of the top three laptops sold on the site were Chromebooks from Acer and Samsung (the third device was the ASUS Transformer Book).
For comparison, Windows notebooks accounted for 31.1 percent of all commercial preconfigured notebook sales during the same period, down from 42.9 percent a year ago.