With second generation Chromebooks still in production and individual units still in transit for new buyers, there appears to be rumblings amongst some of the product manufacturers.
DIGITIMES, which provides daily coverage of Taiwan’s IT companies, reports that HTC and Asus will not be partnering with Google on second generation Chromebooks.
Reports DIGITIMES: “Seeing Acer and Samsung’s first-generation Chromebooks only selling less than 200,000 units (HTC and Asus)…have already decided to back off from cooperating with Google on the second-generation Chromebook, while Acer is still evaluating the project.”
There has been no confirmation from any of the companies involved that the sales numbers are accurate or whether the Taiwanese manufacturers have dropped out of any existing partnerships.
However, Google remains confident that Chromebooks will continue to be manufactured in Taiwan with partnerships of original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers still in tact.
Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome at Google, said in a teleconference with local media: “As we go through later this year, you’ll see us in a better, stronger presence in the marketplace.”
