COVID-19 had a very negative effect on the market, but it was great for the computer market as millions of people switched to working and learning at home. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chromebook market in particular exploded with more than 4x growth.
As reported by Channels this week, the Chromebook market peaked at Q4 2020. Specifically, shipping just over 11 million units in the last quarter compared to about 2.5 million at the same time in 2019. Over the course of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chromebook market totaled more than 30 million units shipped.
By breaking the number, Lenovo was the biggest winner. The company still did not fall short of the 3.5 million units shipped by HP, but the 2.8 million Lenovo Chromebooks shipped in the fourth quarter of 2020 represented tremendous growth of 1.766%. Samsung, Asus, Acer and Dell all also experienced steady, three-digit growth during the pandemic, but did not get any traction compared to competitors. Rushabh Doshi, research director at Canalys, said:
Demand for Chromebooks is skyrocketing. As many countries are forced to accelerate their digital education plans as a result of additional closures, schools and universities are looking for easy-to-implement solutions, and Google’s digital education offering is very popular on competitive platforms, especially in the USA and Western Europe. As governments in many countries chase after a much-needed 1: 1 device-to-student ratio, demand for Chromebooks is expected to remain strong until 2021. There is also increasing interest from consumers and traditional commercial customers to ensure Chromebooks to affordable continuity of business or personal computers.
It also comes with the growth of tablets, which brought the market to its highest peak since 2015, with only 53 million tablets shipped in Q4 2020 alone. Of course, Apple dominated the market with its excellent iPad series, but Samsung had a strong second place with almost the same 40% growth in the year. The overall PC market also saw a 35% year-on-year jump due to the pandemic, but much of it was evident on Chromebooks, probably due to the affordable price points.
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