The analyst firm Canalys has reported that the worldwide PC market, including tablets, grew for the fourth consecutive quarter during 1Q21. Year on year, the PC market saw shipments increase by 53.1% reaching 122.1 million units. The best performers, in terms of growth, were Chromebooks (274.6%) and tablets (51.7%) with shipments reaching 12 million and 39.7 million respectively.
Commenting on the findings, Brian Lynch, Canalys Research Analyst, said:
“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.”
As for each individual firms" performance, HP accounted for 36.4% of Chromebook market shipments, Lenovo was second at 25.9%, Acer held 11.9%, Samsung was sitting at 10%, Dell has 8.4% and other brands represented 7.3%. Samsung saw the biggest annual growth followed by the other firms in the order just listed.
In the tablet market, Apple held onto its lead with a 38.2% market share, and Samsung came second at 20.1%. Amazon with its line of Fire tablets came in fourth place with 8.7% behind Lenovo which had a market share of 9.5%.
According to the analyst, the PC market saw its typically strong holiday season but the continuing pandemic means people are still buying PCs to help them work from home. Canalys believes tablets will become mainstays in growing sectors such as education as well as in commercial deployments.