Chromebook shipments outpace Apple’s Macs for the first time in most recent quarter: IDC

Low-cost Google Chromebook laptops outsold Apple's Macs for the first time during the past quarter, analyst firm IDC told The Verge today.

Manufacturers including Dell, Lenovo, and HP sold more than 2 million Google-powered Chromebooks combined, as against 1.76 million Macs, IDC estimated.

Also those same Google Chromebooks are getting full access to Android's Google Play store, allowing the laptops to run a significant portion of the 1.5 million Android apps out in the wild.

According to commentators, though it might not be good news for Apple, it was nothing to be worried about. Quarter after quarter, Macs had shown sales growth, as against the growth shrinkage across the PC industry. And Apple strategy had always focused on profitably owning a small piece of a much larger pie.

But Microsoft should be worried they say, because the pressure was on and Google's slow-but-steady attack was bearing some real results, and it was not great news for Windows 10.

The Chromebook is built to offer simplicity and portability and runs Google's mega-lightweight Chrome OS, which is essentially a web browser. And it works fine, given that the vast majority of stuff that most people do on computers is based around the browser, anyhow.