Google says over 20 million students are using Chromebooks

Classrooms and Chromebooks seem to be a popular match.

More than 20 million students are using Chromebooks according to a recent blog by Rajen Sheth, Google’s senior director of product management for android and chrome for business.

The blog post celebrated World Teachers’ Day and announced Education Air, a Google online teachers’ conference. This comes days after Google launched G Suite for Education, a collection of improved and streamlined apps for educators and students promoting collaboration across multiple platforms. In general, cross platform functionality is proving advantageous for Chromebooks in the education sector.

Chromebooks began supporting Android apps in early 2016, but only specific models of the laptop. Google, however, recently expanded this functionality with a developer version of Chrome OS, adding Android app compatibility to the Acer Chromebook 14, Acer Chromebook 15, Samsung Chromebook 3, and the Toshiba Chromebook 2. This improvement makes Chrome OS a more functional and attractive operating system in the education space.

Chromebooks are often on the Amazon bestseller list and the devices’ sales numbers are expected to grow to 17 million by 2023.

Global Market Insights showed that of the 5.7 million Chromebooks that were sold in 2014, with 72 per cent of those sales coming from the education sector. The low cost and collaborative quality of Chromebooks make the affordable laptops attractive to this market. 

[source]Google[/source]