As we've reported, although market research findings have been very bleak for PCs and PC equipment makers, Chromebooks--portable computers based on Google's Chrome OS platform--have continued to sell well, and did especially well during the 2013 holiday season. These devices feature low prices, with some of the them going for $200, and a cloud-centric approach to working with apps and data. They also increasingly come with freebies, such as large amounts of free, online storage.
The success of Chromebooks is causing a lot of speculation that Microsoft may be concerned about them. Microsoft also has a new CEO who knows his way around the cloud, so we could see some new approaches from the Redmond giant on the mobile computing front.