We live in a bubble. Among my friends Mac has 90% computer marketshare and the iPhone has probably 75%. But we know empirically that outside of the high-tech fat-wallet echo chamber these numbers are completely different.
I imagine that is where the Chromebooks are going as well: outside of the bubble. We know people are buying them since they are always in the top-selling laptops category on Amazon.
I'm a student in the UK, a friend of mine told me that she switched to using a Chromebook recently and hardly ever uses her laptop anymore. Shes not a "computer person" by any means so they are obviously having an effect.
And having had to sort out student laptops so as to be able to recover College work (backups?), it isn't a bad platform for many people. Local Tesco extra sells quite a few of the cheaper Sanyo and Acer ones apparently. (UK based)
Not only is it always in the top selling laptops category on Amazon, it is the only laptop that appears on the first page for me on the general computers category:
I imagine that is where the Chromebooks are going as well: outside of the bubble. We know people are buying them since they are always in the top-selling laptops category on Amazon.