Piece Of The Puzzle : Chromebooks In The U.S. And The Rest Of The World

I just found a very interesting pair of reports by Puneet Sikka on Market Realist/Yahoo Finance.

1. “Why Apple Devices are Losing Share to Chromebooks in Schools”
2. “Microsoft Gained Presence in the International Education Market”

The former article describes how Chromebooks are now more than half of all devices sold to US Schools (3Q15). The latter one tells us that in the international market, Chromebooks only have a 3% market share. In particular, it tells us that Chromebooks have a tiny 1% share in Brazil, Mexico and India, all markets where cheap Google/Android phones are doing exceedingly well due to high price sensitivity.

In fact, if you look at the chart below, it clearly shows that Chromebook market share is much higher for developed countries than for emerging ones. Although one might presume that cheaper Chromebooks are more suited for low-income countries, the reality is that the inverse is true; low-income countries prefer Windows.

The reason is clearly stated in the article;

The main issue with these countries is that they do not have the required broadband infrastructure to support the cloud-based storage requirements of Chromebooks.

We often only look at the flashy devices that we use, made by the most powerful tech companies in the world; Google, Microsoft and Apple. We often forget that to make these devices work, we need a lot of infrastructure. We also forget that WiFi can be very, very expensive when you want to deploy a network capable of handling hundreds of simultaneous connections. We forget the infrastructure because unless you have to dealt with it directly, it is invisible.

This is something to keep in mind.

1. Google exists only because broadband Internet access is cheap. Its business model and its data collection relies on the infrastructure of vast network of Internet equipment that most people in developed countries now take for granted.
2. Amazon exists only because of a highly developed and inexpensive network of deliveries to your doorstep. This was not common 30 years ago in Japan, and I assume, most other countries.
3. Microsoft and Apple built their businesses before this infrastructure. They have business models that work without it.

One could ask the question; what infrastructure enables Uber? What recent changes have occurred to it? Or they could ask, what infrastructure enables self-driving cars? Then they should look at other countries to see if the infrastructure is there.

I strongly believe that to understand the underlying current flowing through technology and innovation, one has to understand the gradual changes of the infrastructure. The tech that we see are often just the rocks that are being pushed downstream. The Chromebook example is a strong reminder of what we should keep our eyes on.