Chromebooks have been very popular for education uses over the past few years. Sure, iPads and laptops are still very common, but few can compete with the Chromebook when it comes to price and performance for learning purposes.
Seeing how we are still in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century, it should be no surprise that Chromebook sales are through the roof. The latest data from analytic firm Canalys shows that in the first quarter of 2021 sales of Chromebooks grew 275% since Q1 2020.
That’s a massive jump in sales. Laptops and tablets also saw an increase, with notebooks surging 62% in Q1 and tablets up by 52%. While those are impressive numbers all around, the real winner is Chromebooks by a mile. They have outsold laptops and tablets by a wide margin, just look at the graph below.
The only category that seems to be shrinking during the pandemic is desktop computers, which saw a decline of 4% from the first quarter last year.
One of the analysts at Canalys, Brian Lynch, had this to say about the recent meteoric rise of Chromebooks.
Chromebooks are well and truly a mainstream computing product now. While the education sector still accounts for the majority of shipments, their popularity with consumers and traditional commercial customers has reached new heights over the course of the last year. HP and Lenovo dominate the Chromebook market, but the boom has been a case of a rising tide lifting all boats, allowing vendors such as Acer and Samsung to carve out substantial shares within the PC market by catering specifically to Chromebook demand.
HP, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, and Dell all lead in sales for Chromebooks, with HP claiming the top spot by a wide margin. Even though Samsung sits far behind in the fourth-place slot, sales of its Chromebooks have exploded.
In the first quarter of 2021 alone, Samsung saw an increase of 2233% in sales of its Chromebooks. That still puts it at nearly a quarter of the sales that HP did in the same timeframe, but it’s clear that demand is growing and manufacturers are benefiting by pumping out more Chromebook devices.
While all of those numbers are certainly impressive, a separate research company, IDC, reports an even higher increase in Chromebook sales. According to IDC’s data, Chromebooks saw a 357.1% growth year on year in the first quarter of 2021. IDC also shows a discrepancy in rankings, with Dell taking the number four slot and Samsung rounding out the top five.
The numbers may not match between these two research firms, but one thing is certain, Chromebooks are gaining steam during the pandemic.
