On October 6, the annual traditional Made by Google presentation will take place , at which the Pixel 7 smartphones and Pixel Watch smartwatches will definitely be fully announced, and also, probably, the cheaper Chromecast . But you can’t wait for the new Pixelbook at the presentation – Google canceled the next version of its Pixelbook laptop and disbanded the team responsible for its development, The Verge reports , citing knowledgeable sources within the company.
It is reported that the development of the next generation of the flagship Chromebook Pixelbook was “strongly delayed” and it was curtailed, and employees were transferred to other relevant projects. Obviously, this reallocation of resources is due to the desire of management to reduce operating costs against the backdrop of rising inflation around the world along with other economic shocks and a corresponding change in consumer sentiment in the PC market.
Google has not yet commented on this information and has not made public statements. But there is no reason to doubt the veracity of this information. And since Google took the Pixelbook off the market back in 2020 , the move effectively means the company is officially all laptops and leaving the market after nearly a decade of trying to gain a foothold in it. We are talking about the release of laptops in the classic form factor, and not hybrid tablets and 2-in-1 transformers.
At least for a while, Google won’t release the Pixelbook in a traditional laptop form factor until it decides to come back with a new model. And this is quite ironic given the return of Google to the tablet market after an 8-year pause – the new Pixel Tablet is expected only in 2023 . It’s ironic because at one time Google had already abandoned the Pixel line of Chromebooks in favor of tablets and the Pixel Slate model, which finally failed in sales and led to the curtailment of the business line.
Well
Java evening
Below – briefly recall the path of Google in the PC market and the Chromebook segment (chronology):
- The original Google Chromebook Pixel debuted on February 21, 2013, and two years later – in March 2015 – the second generation came out. The updated model received good performance and was cheaper than its predecessor. At the end of August 2016, Google suspended sales of the Chromebook Pixel 2 without releasing a new model.
- In 2017, Google changed strategy again – the first Pixelbook became a high-end alternative to the “people’s” Chromebook. 12.3-inch 2-in-1 convertible laptop starting at $999 with a $99 Pixelbook Pen that had to be purchased separately.
- In 2019, Google introduced the more affordable $649 Pixelbook Go , which at the same time was positioned as a premium Pixel-branded Chromebook. It’s still on sale and remains the only Pixel from ChromeOS.
While Pixel-branded Chromebooks aimed to showcase how ChromeOS has expanded with premium hardware, they have subjectively never been as popular as the cheaper third-party models that have long dominated the education space. Affordable ChromeOS laptops have exploded in popularity over the past few years — and the pandemic and Microsoft’s own push for Windows 11 have made a big difference .
Shipments of Chromebooks in 2020 for the first time exceeded 30 million units – this is the best result ever
