David Shapiro, Director of Chromebook Marketing at Google, said in a blog post on Monday that the company is expanding its Chromebook reach beyond Best Buy, Amazon.com and Google Play.
Starting on Monday, Walmart will be making the newest Acer Chromebook, which has a 16 GB SSD, available in approximately 2,800 stores across the U.S. for just $199. Additional models will be added to the company's laptop sections later on this summer.
Staples is also joining the Chromebook club, offering a mix of solutions from Acer, HP and Samsung at every store in the U.S. -- more than 1,500 in total -- beginning this weekend. These can also be purchased through Staples online, while businesses can purchase units through the Staples Advantage B2B program.
After that, Chromebooks will begin popping up like wildflowers at select Office Depot and OfficeMax stores in the coming months. Regional chains Fry's and TigerDirect will also begin selling the Chrome OS notebooks in the near future. That said, it's suddenly becoming a Chromebook invasion.
"In the 10 other markets worldwide where Chromebooks are sold, availability in national retailers continues to expand," Shapiro said. "In addition to Dixons in the UK, now 116 Tesco stores are selling Chromebooks, as well as all Mediamarket and Saturn stores in the Netherlands, FNAC stores in France and Elgiganten stores in Sweden. In Australia, all JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman stores will be carrying Chromebooks for their customers as well."
"We’re working hard to bring Chromebooks to even more countries later this year," he added.
Acer's current Chromebook features an 11.6 inch screen with a 1366 x 768 display, a dual-core Intel Celeron processor, Gigabit Ethernet and dual-band Wireless N networking, an HD camera, three USB 2.0 ports, one HDMI port and one VGA port. Also included is a 2-in-1 SD card slot, the 16 GB SSD, 100 GB of Google Drive cloud storage for two years, and a battery promising up to four hours on a single charge.
