A follow up to my ChromeOS post.

Apparently I missed this NPD report of computing sales for the year, through US commercial channels.  It shows that while both Chromebooks and Android tablets have surged this past year, Chromebook growth exploded like crazy, gaining 9.4 percentage points in one year.  In fact, more Chromebooks were sold in the commercial channels, than Android tablets.  But combine Chromebook and Android tablet sales and they added up to more than the combined sales of Apple's notebooks and tablets.

So I got to thinking that this reminds me a lot of the Android smartphone growth trajectory, on its way to a stable, moderately dominant market share.

Albeit, the source of ChromeOS growth is quite a bit different than smart phones, in that the majority of it comes from the education market and certain enterprises looking for thin (re: mobile) clients, while Android smartphones come almost entirely from consumer purchases (in turn fueling the expanding concept of enterprise BYOD.)  Still, Chromebooks were far and away the best selling notebooks at Amazon.com during the holiday shopping season, and Chromebooks have been at the top of Amazon's best-seller list in the notebook category most of this year.

Another point that I missed: inclusive Google Apps -- it's what's driving growth of Chromebooks in the education and enterprise markets.  Project this out into the consumer market, where Google Drive becomes the good-enough replacement of Microsoft's Office suite, and therein belies the compelling reason why Microsoft's future is very cloudy, literally (as in cloud apps) and figuratively (as in, uncertain).   Google is bearing down on Microsoft's two main profit centers -- Office and desktop OS -- while Microsoft is losing billions in a fruitless chase after Google's profit center -- Search (which encompasses ads).

Therefore, I think that 5-year projection might be too far out; ChromeOS might come to gain a dominant position over Windows in 2~3 years instead.  Oh, and for those WP fanboys out there: If you thought recent WP market share growth was huge, that year-over-year Chromebook surge = 4700% -- how do you like them...err...apples?

In a near-future post: No, Microsoft's WP is not winning (complete with pretty charts!)