Major laptop manufacturers, Google Inc. and Intel Corporation are set to soon market 20 new laptops powered by Google's Chrome OS in a concerted bid to turn the screws on Microsoft.

The large number of new Chromebooks is significant since the partners only released four Chromebooks in all of 2013. Analysts said the increasing embrace of Chrome is the latest sign Intel no longer exclusively relies on Microsoft as its main market.

Hewlett-Packard Company, Dell, Inc., LG Electronics Inc., Lenovo Group, Ltd., AsusTek Computer, Inc., Toshiba Corporation and Acer, Inc. are among those set to market Chrome-based devices this year.

The reason for the surge in Chromebooks is purely market driven: Chromebooks have become a fast-selling category at a time when sales of conventional PCs are weakening. Many users turn to Chromebooks to run Internet-based services such as apps instead of installing the myriad kinds of software typically used on PCs.

A Chromebook is a PC running Google's Chrome OS. Chromebook laptops and other devices are designed to be used while connected to the Internet. All the data is stored in the "cloud" and accessed by an Internet connection.

Chromebooks are quite popular in schools since school officials can better monitor online student activity. They're also cheap, with the least expensive priced at less than $200.

Intel is trying to encourage the trend towards Chromebooks by offering faster processor chips and associated graphics circuitry for rendering videogame images and other demanding tasks.

Intel's increasing infatuation with Chrome is the latest sign it has changed a strategy that once was mostly pro-Microsoft, whose Windows software runs on most laptops.

Research firms have found that sales of Intel-based Chromebooks began taking the majority of sales in the category in 2013. There has also been a move away from the x86 processors that are common in most PCs and towards ARM.

Other clients for the Chrome OS are Chrome "boxes," which are small devices attached to computer displays, and all-in-one desktop models known as Chrome "bases."