However, Samsung and Acer are the leaders of the market, the former leading with 65 percent, followed by Acer at 21 percent. But it seems that ASUS and Lenovo are set to increase their presence with the release of the cheapest Chromebooks so far. A fresh report from DigiTimes.com says that the two companies are set to release 11.6-inch Chromebooks at a price of $149. If true, they will be cheaper by 25% than the Acer C720, the cheapest Chromebook at the moment. Lenovo and Asus’ Chromebooks are said to be based on Chinese company Rockchip’s ARM processor, a quad-core RK3288 ARM Cortex A17 CPU running at 1.8GHz. Lenovo’s 11.6-inch Chromebook is said to launch earlier at the end of 2014 or in the first half of 2015 while ASUS’ 11.6-inch Chromebook is set for a release in 2015. The release of such cheap devices will put further pressure on affordable Windows tablets and laptops. Microsoft has offered a Windows 8.1 with Bing version for free to OEMs in order to drive consumer adoption, but it seems that this isn’t stopping Google’s Chrome OS to see further increase.
