Google's Chromebook laptop will be carried by over 6,600 stores around the world, as the company signs on more retailers.
Starting Monday, Walmart is offering an Acer Chromebook, which has a 16GB Solid State Drive, in about 2,800 stores across the U.S. for US$199, while from this weekend, Staples will offer Chromebooks from Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Samsung Electronics in its over 1,500 stores in the country.
Staples will also sell the products online. The laptop running the Chrome OS is an attempt by Google to attract users to cloud computing, but it has as yet to make a significant impact in the market.
In the coming months, select Office Depot, OfficeMax, and regional chains Fry's and TigerDirect outlets will also begin selling Chromebooks, Google said in a blog post on Monday. The new retailers join Best Buy and Amazon.com who are already selling the devices.
Google will now have three times the number of retail outlets as it expands both in the U.S. and 10 other markets worldwide where Chromebooks are sold, it said.
In addition to Dixons in the U.K., 116 Tesco stores are selling Chromebooks, as well as all Media Markt 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, Google said.
The company said in March it was doubling the number of stores selling the device in the U.S. with more than 1,000 Best Buy stores expected to offer it. Google plans to introduce the Chromebooks later this year in other markets.
John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com
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