Dive Brief:

• By the end of this year, 5.2 million Chromebooks will be shipped, according to a new report by market research firm Gartner.  
• Gartner says this is a 79% increase in sales from last year and that it can be attributed to today's robust education market.
• The company predicts that the good times will keep rolling for Chromebook, anticipating that by 2017 there will be 14.4 million shipments of the device.  

Dive Insight:

According to Gartner, in 2013, 85% of Chromebook shipments were attributed to education. This high number of education purchases and the even higher number of shipments this year is why Gartner credits the education marketplace for Chromebook's success.  Based on the numbers, Gartner is recommending that businesses also jump on the trend. "By adopting Chromebooks and cloud computing, businesses can benefit; they can shift their focus from managing devices to managing something much more important — their data,"  Isabelle Durand, a principal analyst at Gartner, said in a press release.