Asus is debuting a new Chromebook laptop, the 11-inch C200, which features a dual-core Intel Celeron processor and a pricetag of $250.

The computer maker is just one of many PC vendors jumping on the Chromebook train, which is enjoying robust market action. A new Gartner research report claims Chromebook sales will reach 5.2 million units in 2014, which represents an increase of 79 percent over 2013.

The number is expected to almost triple by 2017, to 14.4 million units, as the market for low-cost computers grows, especially in sectors such as banking and education.

"By adopting Chromebooks and cloud computing, businesses can benefit; they can shift their focus from managing devices to managing something much more important -- their data," said Isabelle Durand, report author and analyst.

"Now that the PC market is no longer growing strongly, vendors are searching for new business opportunities. They launched Chromebooks to revive interest in sub-$300 portable PCs once the netbook bubble had burst."

The report also shows 85 percent of Chromebooks sold in 2014 were sold in the education market, and 82 percent of sales were in North America. Samsung is the largest seller of Chromebooks, accounting for 64.9 percent of the market.

Durand says the Chromebook will likely remain a niche market over the next five years. To become a prominent competitor, he said, Chromebooks will need to offer faster connectivity, larger solid state hard drives and better user support.

"Making a competitive Chromebook is not just a matter of hardware and price; what is most important is to show how the device's cloud-based architecture provides genuine advantages to users," Durand said.

Asus' new offering to the Chromebook market does not offer that faster edge over other Chromebooks, largely because of the fact that it is a budget computer. According to a review by Dana Wollman, the C200 is "quite a bit slower" than other Chromebook models, taking 12 seconds to boot, around double that of other Celeron-based computers.

Samsung, being the leader in Chromebooks, sold 1.7 million units in 2013. Acer came in second place with 31.4 percent of the market, followed by HP with 6.8 percent.

Google claims that owning a Chromebook will save users up to $5,000 over five years. This estimate is based on a couple assumptions, including one that the company owning the computer replaces its computers every three years.

"Some IT organizations could switch to Chromebook to save costs (cheaper than Windows PC)," Durand said. "Since Chromebooks are cloud-based devices, the security, device management, and even core content creation apps such as Google Docs are run in the cloud, which produces cost reductions on both managing and setting up the devices, as well as some software licensing costs."

TAG Asus, C200, Chromebook, Google

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