citation needed
This "failure" you speak of is just failure of some manufacturers' grand marketshare visions, not quality failure of actual products. Thus, irrelevant to a person making a buying decision.
Really?
What Chromebooks actually compete with are cheap x86 netbooks and ARM-based tablets. If a Chromebook is enough for the job, I don't understand why you were considering an Air to begin with.
If Porsche said they are going to capture 60% marketshare in passenger car market by the end of 2013, and instead of that happening they "merely" retained their margins, built even better cars and sold twice as many as before, using your logic we should deduce "Porsches are a failure and no one should buy Porsches". But failure to meet some random absurd sales expectation says nothing about the product. It's not a "failure" of any consequence to the customer. It's irrelevant to this discussion which is from a customer perspective.
What's painfully obvious is that you don't understand the value of the form factor. Two years ago I switched to an ultrabook from a laptop with a same size screen; the relatively slight form factor change has made a great practical difference, and it is worth a lot of money to me and others for whom it is actually relevant.
Only if you ignore the largest ultrabook vendor which currently sells about 90% of all ultrabooks. Total ultrabook sales are at ~6 million yearly and growing. They are starting to be a considerable presence in $1k+ price segment, which is where all worthwhile work laptops are anyway.
