Apple trembles as Chromebook sales reach 5 figures.

Roll the clock back to May 2011 and the world took a small step back, as Google began the process of rolling Chromebooks into the market. Less that 6 months later, things have changed. Or have they. KitGuru pulls out an abacus and does some basic addition.

The guy who owns land, thinks about planting crops. The guy pulling the wheat out of the ground, daydreams about having a mill. Millers ponder selling bread and so forth. As the product moves down the supply chain, more money is generated and everyone wants a piece.

Monopolists dream of owning the entire chain, so they can fix the pricing and reap huge profits.

Google is a great search engine [we even use it in the KitGuru office – Ed] and that's lead to the creation of a 21st century advertising empire, the like of which no one could have imagined 20 years back But the Google-ites are not happy. They've bought Motorola and pushed companies like Acer and Samsung, hard, to create Chromebooks, which are netbooks without a Windows operating system.

Naturally, leaving the operating system off has affected the price. There's no way you could afford to buy a Windows netbook for £350. Surely.

Well, unless you were prepared to live with this complete Asus netbook, which costs less than £200.

So, with this kind of pricing, how far has Google manage to go in taking over the mobile PC hardware market.

The latest reports we've seen, show that Google Chromebooks have now sold over 10,000 units in the UK. In total.

Poor old Apple, in comparison, has managed to convince the UK to buy almost 600,000 units – and all with whopping margins for the Cupertino brigade.

Spurred on by the sale of less than 2% of the unit shipments managed by Apple so far, Google has continued to the next stage of its brand development – with the opening of the Home of Chrome (or Chrome Zone) in London. Laura Thompson, Google Marketing guru, said “Many things in life, like football and rock music, are best experienced in person. Chromebooks are no exception”. Sure. And there are at least 10,000 people who might agree with her. Whatever the reality, American Google wants to use the UK as the aircraft carrier from which to launch sales and marketing promotions into Europe. Sounds familiar.

Acer is definitely worried about how the new Google revenue model might work, and it's voiced its wobbles publicly. Samsung seems to be pushing ahead, full steam, with Google devices.

KitGuru says: Battles involving 600,000 Vs 10,000 is the kind of odds you use for films involving ‘heroes' like Custer. Long-term, Google must have something up its sleeve, but – right now – they are just not a force in the netbook market.

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