Google Chromebook Opening Weekend Sales at London Retail Store

Google recently unveiled its first retail store in London called the “Chromezone.” This “store within a store” resides in PC World on Tottenham Court Road.

This 30 square foot ‘pop-up’ store is meant to promote Google’s relatively new Chromebook, a cheap, web-based netbook that runs the Google Chrome OS.

We’ve got an internal document from this Chromezone store in London that details how many Chromebooks Google has been selling in-store.

Based off an internal record document from a “Google Genius” (yes, they are called that) at this Chromezone, Google has apparently only been selling about two Chromebooks a day.

During the first three days of the “Chromebook Pilot Launch,” only two Chromebooks were sold in-store each day. That’s a grand total of 6 Chromebooks sold on the Chromezone’s opening weekend (September 3oth thru October 2nd).

Richard tipped us off to his blog post about visiting Google’s store in London recently. Based off internal sales reports he stumbled upon while visiting, he found out that Chromebook sales have been unimpressive to say the least.

Here are some comments from Chromezone employees after demoing the Chromebook to potential customers:

“Guest was concerned that it could not be used for anything beyond the internet, so once the Wi-Fi connection went, he would not be able to use the device. I advised him that we also had offline apps so should he come out of an area where there was no internet, he would still be able to use the Chromebook.”

“The guest was hovering around the Chromebook just browsing in the store. I offered her a demo but she was more interested in what the Chromebook could do rather than a demo. She was excited about the specifications of the Chromebook, even more so the idea of the cloud or the SSD. But she was thrown off by the lack of control the user has over the Chromebook. When I informed her of the developer mode switch at the back she became excited about what the Chromebook had to offer.”

“The guest was in the area and had heard that this was the only space to see a Chromebook. He had used the Chrome browser in the past and wished to see the Chrome OS. He was impressed by features and cloud functionality but not by the fact that the offline gdocs was not available now. Said he will keep an eye on it and also see what other offline apps get developed.”

“The guest was relatively young and was looking for a laptop that was affordable, light, and could do the essentials. She was really happy with what the Chromebook had to offer and overlooked the absence of the CD player and was enjoying its simplicity but was put off when she found out she couldn’t install iTunes, which was a big part of her decision.”

Samsung and Acer both offer the Chromebook, with prices ranging from $350 to $500. Chromebooks can be bought at Amazon, Best Buy, and TigerDirect.