Tablet and Chromebook sales continue to rise and experienced very strong growth in the first quarter of 2021, according to preliminary data from IDC.
As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic and confinements to curb the pandemic, the technology industry continues to grow strongly. Just look at the stratospheric revenue and profit figures being reported by major companies in their quarterly results, Amazon, Samsung, Apple, and Microsoft to name a few.
IDC explains what we already know: “While vaccination programs and companies starting to return to their offices may slow the trend towards telecommuting, we are still far from returning to ‘normal’ working conditions and therefore expect demand for PCs to continue for some time”.
If we add to teleworking home study and the need for leisure infrastructure, we can understand the sales increases in equipment such as laptops that pull strongly on today’s computing, other categories that are recovering market such as smartphones and
Tablet sales in 2021 Q1
According to IDC, 39.9 million electronic tablets were shipped in the first quarter of 2021, representing a 55.2 percent increase over the same period last year. These are sales levels not seen since 2013 for a segment that had fallen sharply in the past year.
There are no surprises by manufacturer and Apple tops the list rising 64% to corner more than 30% of the market, the mid-range with iPad and the high-end with the iPad Pro which the firm is increasingly focusing on replacing laptops. Samsung has a 20% share dominating the high-end of Android in the second position, and together with Apple far behind the rest.
Top 5 tablet vendors 2021 Q1
However, Lenovo rose strongly (+138%) covering all market ranges, while Amazon, thanks to its distribution capacity and its inexpensive tablets that dominate the entry-level Android range, was the vendor that grew the most in the quarter (+143%). Rounding out the top-5 is Huawei, which has not been lifting its head since the Trump administration’s blockade, although at least it was able to maintain sales.
Chromebook sales in 2021 Q1
We have been saying for some time that Chromebooks are a very real alternative to Windows and macOS. Google has been able to consolidate the platform in recent years and the data coming in from IDC is a further warning to the two big boys in PCs, Microsoft and Apple. Although the 13 million units sold are still far from those of Windows or macOS, its growth has been spectacular and the consulting firm assigns it the growth of 357.1%.
By manufacturers, the PC giants (minus Apple) take the top five positions, with Apple and Lenovo in the first two positions, while Acer occupies a better position in Chromebooks than in PCs, to finish with Dell and Samsung.
Top 5 Chromebook vendors 2021 Q1
Chromebooks have just celebrated their first ten years on the market and continue to have great growth potential.
