Lenovo is planning to launch super cheap Chromebooks in early 2015, the sometimes reliable Taiwanese tech site Digitimes reports.
‘the devices will be powered by ARM CPUs from Rockchip and retail at a sub-$170 price point’
Citing its sources from the supply chain, the blog says the devices will be powered by ARM CPUs from Rockchip and retail at a sub-$170 price point.
Outlandish? Not really. Back in June 2014, Rockchip demoed a prototype 13.3-inch Chromebook running on an ARM Cortex A17 CPU paired with 2GB RAM and a Mali-T674 GPU.
Adding weight to – or serving as the basis for – this latest claim, Chromium source code shows that a Rockchip board with the same specifications, codenamed ‘Veyron‘ has been in development for some months.
What is new in this report is the price of ‘sub-$170’. Given that most Chromebooks are already considered low, going even lower is a risky move. Digitimes even cites a source as claiming the decision will ‘drag down profits for notebook vendors’ as a whole. Yikes!
On more positive news, Lenovo is expected to increase its Chromebook shipments 200% to 1.5 million units next year, a sizeable chunk of the 12 million Chromebook sales Digitimes’ own research forecasts for 2015.
At the end of October, the site posted a report claiming ASUS will ‘flood’ the market with new Chromebooks this holiday season.
- Source: Digitimes (via Chrome Story)