With sales on Chromebook’s not one of the highest in the Google umbrella, we suspected that Google will look to let the netbooks die, but they decided against this and launched two new editions a few weeks ago. Samsung and Acer still seem eager to ship the low cost netbooks, and Google still want to give cloud computing a push.
One of the major factors of the new Chromebook was that they were cheaper than the previous editions, even though they came with slightly improved performance. Google has launched a big marketing campaign for the Chromebook in the US and Europe, to try to combat poor sales.
A new report from China Times says that Google will launch its own brand of Chromebook to combat the poor sales and create a better ecosystem of Nexus products. While the Chromebook is a Google product, it feels outside without the Nexus name.
This could be true, given the timing – with the Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet both coming out, Google may want to make a full ecosystem of products for users to buy. With Google TV and Google Fiber, it seems Google want to control almost all your digital life.
Compal will apparently manufacture the product and Google have an order of twenty million devices, quite a large amount. The Nexus Chromebook will ship before the end of 2012, so in time for the holiday season which is already in full swing.
We do question the timing and Google’s movement – with the big ad campaign for the Chromebook’s on offer now, are they going to bring out their own brand so soon?
Google may look to capitalize on the already cheap price of the Chromebook and may throw in a few Google-based offers to ramp up Chromebook usage. With Google OS not fairing at all well compared to other operating systems, Google may want their own brand to start dominating the netbook market.