Sydney's PCS Australia drives Chromebook growth in schools

Gartner has singled out one Sydney reseller's education deal as driving Chromebook sales in Australia.

The Catholic schools deal was secured by veteran Australian reseller PCS Australia, a five-year "All Star" of the CRN Fast50.

According to Gartner, "In Australia, education sales were largely attributed to a decision by the Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta to use email, social media and a student lesson platform with the Google ecosystem. Students attending such schools are required to use Chromebooks in the classroom."

CRN broke the news of PCS Australia's Catholic schools deal back in 2013.

This week, PCSA founder Syd Borg told CRN that while the deal was initially for Acer and Samsung devices, the reseller was now primarily supplying Acer devices after Samsung withdrew from the laptops market in Australia. PCSA doesn't sell Asus Chromebooks to the Diocese.

"The relationships we have maintained with the Diocese for over 20 years are still strong and the relationship with Google is strong and overall, it is a good partnership."

Chromebooks still represent a small fraction of unit sales, with 146,000 shipped in APAC and Japan region in 2014. Gartner expects this to rise 54 percent to 225,000 units in 2015 and then hit 276,000 units in 2016.

Education remains the brightest spot for the Google operating system, representing 68.8 percent of sales in APAC, versus 16.5 in "other business" and 14.7 in consumer.

Globally, 5.7 million Chromebooks were sold in 2014, according to Gartner, while 315.9 million PCs were sold in the same period.