Consider Acer among the Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Chrome OS believers with sales numbers for proof. Acer president Jim Wong, in an interview with Bloomberg News, said that since November 2012, about 10 percent of the Taiwanese manufacturer’s U.S. notebook shipments were Chrome-based units–a performance he believes is repeatable and can be extended to other markets.

But that’s not all. In touting Chrome, Wong dinged Windows 8 just a bit, noting Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) new OS didn’t do much for Acer’s Q4 2012 sales, certainly not enough to prevent a 28 percent slide in Q4 PC sales compared to last year, according to researcher IDC’s figures. Wong’s Chrome sentiment may not be such an outlier. Last week, Lenovo offered a new ThinkPad aimed at education, joining Acer and Samsung as the third supplier of Chromebooks with others likely to come. (Note: Be sure to read The VAR Guy’s Chromebook review).

“Windows 8 itself is still not successful,” said Wong. “The whole market didn’t come back to growth after the Windows 8 launch, that’s a simple way to judge if it is successful or not.”

Wong suggested that Chrome’s early uptake by businesses and education appealed to Acer because the Google OS’s “value is that it’s more secure.” To reach the tightly targeted audience, Acer spent more on marketing to promote its Chrome-based notebooks than with Windows 8 but the fact that those efforts generated significant sales was “encouraging,” Wong said.

In speaking up for Acer’s Chrome-based notebooks, Wong signaled the company’s intention to line up options beyond PCs and Windows-based systems to shore up sales. The vendor, which just wrote off some $120 million from the value of its Gateway, Packard Bell and eMachines business, is, similar to other PC makers–overly reliant on consumer sales as users turn away from PCs and toward tablets and other mobile devices. According to IDC’s Q4, 2012 numbers, Acer shipped about 2.7 million units fewer than it did in the same period last year, representing the largest backstep of any leading vendor worldwide.

Wong told Bloomberg that Acer plans to compensate for the PC sales slide by allocating more resources to its smartphone business with a goal to achieve 5 million units sold in 2014, a 10-fold jump from current levels. As for tablets, late last October Acer shelved its Windows-RT tablet plans, perhaps spooked by Microsoft’s Surface tablet. Wong said the company is still evaluating the platform.