The dramatic slide in sales of PCs continues, but for one new player in this market this is an opportunity. Google has launched another of its Chromebook laptops this week - made by HP in this case - and is poised to grab a bigger share of a shrinking market.

That won't amuse Microsoft whose own mission to expand beyond its PC powerbase isn't making much progress.

Google's Chromebooks are quite limited devices that only really function well for web-surfing, email and document writing rather than for more sophisticated applications. Nevertheless, their price is making them attractive to anyone wanting an easy way of getting online and doing some work without going to the expense of buying a tablet whose touch screen interface might not suit them.

The latest figures from Gartner (a research organization for IT industry executives), reporting an 8.6% fall in PC sales in the last three months compared to a year ago show that the trend is away from devices like the Chromebook and towards tablets. The volume of sales in the back-to-school quarter were at their lowest level since 2008.

Against this background though, the Chromebook is surging ahead. Gartner reckons two million will be sold this year, over five million in 2014, and 12 million by 2016. Now that will still leave the Chrome OS with just over 3% of a PC market where margins will grow ever slimmer and profits will be harder to find.http:///19zgUsk

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