Strong tablet and Chromebook shipments lead to growth in the PC market

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: PC makers have a reason to cheer this week as the latest quarterly report from Canalys shows strong growth for the second successive quarter. The industry analyst said total PC shipments (including tablets) reached 124.5 million units in the third quarter. That’s up 23 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

On an individual vendor basis, Lenovo led the way with 23.5 million units shipped, followed closely by Apple at 22.1 million. HP, Dell and Samsung rounded out the top five with shipments of 18.7 million units, 12 million units and 10 million units, respectively.

Looking at individual product categories, we find that Chromebooks saw the biggest shipment growth at 122 percent. Shipments of detachables increased by 88 percent while ultra slim notebook shipments were up 57 percent in the quarter. In fact, all categories saw growth, save for two: desktop workstations and tower / small desktops, which saw dips of 27 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

Pure growth aside, it was also a great quarter for tablets. Apple maintained pole position, shipping 15.2 million units during the three-month period, an increase of 47 percent year over year. Samsung placed second with a little over nine million tablet shipments, up 79.8 percent year over year.

In total, manufacturers shipped 44.3 million tablets during the quarter, good for a 43.3 percent year-over-year increase.

Masthead credit: Eclipse Production

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https://www.techspot.com/news/87601-tablets-chromebooks-leading-pc-market-comeback.html

 

[Squid Surprise]

Lol... this is pandemic-based growth... it means nothing for the long-term future of anything.... let's see what the numbers are in 2-3 years and talk.

 

[captaincranky]

With regard to "Chromebook growth", many school systems are providing them to low income students for remote learning. I honestly don't understand how you could not have higher numbers of them sold.

Window laptops are generally way more expensive than their Chromebook counterparts. Hence boards of education would shy away from providing them.

 

[Tom Sunday]

I would think that Chromebooks or like formats will be the wave for the many. Or even the future. Windows OS environments have maintained to be difficult to keep-up and even to operate. People love to just "click and go" and have others do all of the upkeep, maintenance, etc. The ongoing cell-phone advancements (or their now multi-purpose usage) have also been evidence that people 'on the go' are using those for what tablets used to be engaged for. Then long ago laptops became replacements for desktops at work and at home. Employers loved that as employees were now able to take work home in a form of a laptop and what once used to be a briefcase. There is a good chance that 'Windows' will ultimately feel the pinch or loosing even more market share to much easier and cheaper to operate OS's.

 

[mattferg]

I would think that Chromebooks or like formats will be the wave for the many. Or even the future. Windows OS environments have maintained to be difficult to keep-up and even to operate. People love to just "click and go" and have others do all of the upkeep, maintenance, etc. The ongoing cell-phone advancements (or their now multi-purpose usage) have also been evidence that people 'on the go' are using those for what tablets used to be engaged for. Then long ago laptops became replacements for desktops at work and at home. Employers loved that as employees were now able to take work home in a form of a laptop and what once used to be a briefcase. There is a good chance that 'Windows' will ultimately feel the pinch or loosing even more market share to much easier and cheaper to operate OS's.

This has been said for years. Their sales are still pathetic. A 122% increase from a tiny percentage in this market is embarassing. If you check the actual data they've gone from 6% to 11% in a market where sales have exploded. Not great, considering this is a share of new sales, not the market as a whole.