We’re Chromebook advocates here. There are probably few statements that exist that are so demonstrably true. But even our ChromeOS fandom doesn’t tear us away from the reality that there are still large swathes of laptop users who choose not to use a Chromebook on a day-to-day basis, or who don’t even know it is a legitimate option.
Sometimes these realities hit harder than others, and I’m forced to reconcile the fact that I’ve been spreading the gospel of ChromeOS for nearly a decade and there are just a lot of people who are not interested. That’s OK and that’s part of why we do what we do, but there are days when that reality is hard to deal with and part of me just wants to stop my contrary ways and go with the flow. These days are rare, but they are there, and when i see articles like this newest from android authority, I’m just happy about it.
In a survey of their readers (they have a lot of them), Android Authority simply asked how often these readers use a Chromebook in 2022. The response options were simple: Yes all the time; Yes from time to time; Rarely; and no. And if you asked me to predict this chart, it would look nothing like what we see above. Instead, the ‘Yes all the time’ the crowd would have been the smallest with the ‘Nope’ crowd taking the cake. Call me cynical, but I’m a little shocked by the results.
From the comments we see on videos and on our website, there are simply a lot of trolls out there who don’t want to see ChromeOS succeed and can’t help pointing out Chromebooks’ shortcomings without taking the time to address them. to try. and see the benefits for themselves. After years of battling these arguments, I guess I got a little salty about it and resigned myself to fighting for Chromebooks for way longer than I thought.
However, what we find in this survey of about 1600 readers of an Android website is that just over 75% of them are using a Chromebook and a majority respondents use Chromebooks regularly. These numbers would be skewed in another direction on an Apple or Windows blog, of course, but it’s really encouraging to see Android users starting to use Chromebooks as regular-use devices.
What this also means is general consumers are finally starting to board the ChromeOS train as well. We know education and business are huge areas for Chromebooks, but the consumer sector has always been a bit of a laggard when it comes to Chromebook adoption. This poll makes me feel like the tide might finally be turning and with some of the coolest devices coming in 2023 (we’ll be able to share them soon), we might see the first emergence of Chromebooks rightfully take hold of the market General public.
Sure, this poll is small (relatively speaking), but it also reveals a trend that seems long overdue. Hopefully other big tech blogs will do similar polls in the future to gauge the general popularity of ChromeOS at this point. Chromebooks are so capable, fun to use, and easy to recommend that it seems like their growth in the consumer market should be taken for granted. That hasn’t happened yet, but with ChromeOS better than ever and more great hardware on the way, hopefully that will change in 2023.
