Chromebooks outsold iPads and MacBooks for the first time last quarter

Demand for Chromebooks is expected to remain strong in the second quarter.

What you need to know

• Sales of tablets and Chromebooks continued to rise in the first quarter of 2021.
• Preliminary data from IDC shows a total of 13 million Chromebooks were shipped in Q1 2021, up from 2.8 million during the same period last year.
• HP was the biggest Chromebook vendor in the January to March period, with a market share of 33.5%.

Chromebook sales skyrocketed last year as the pandemic made studying and working from home the new normal. According to preliminary data from the IDC’s worldwide quarterly personal computing device tracker, sales of Chromebooks and tablets remained strong in the first quarter of 2021.

While only 2.8 million Chromebooks were shipped in the first quarter of 2020, total shipments reached 13 million units in Q1 this year. HP, which was held the third spot in Q1 2020, was the biggest Chromebook vendor in Q1 2021, with a market share of 33.5% and 633.9% YoY growth. Lenovo, which makes some of the best Chromebooks, saw shipments rise 356.2% in the January to March period. However, its global market share remained flat at 25.6%. Acer’s market share, on the other hand, fell from 26.4% to 14.5%. However, the company still achieved an impressive 150.9% growth in shipments.

Anuroopa Nataraj, research analyst at IDC, said in a statement:

While vaccine rollouts and businesses returning to offices may slow down the work-from-home trend, we are still far from returning to ‘normal’ working conditions and hence the demand for tablets, especially detachables, is expected to continue for a while. However, as buyers increasingly turn towards competing products, such as thin and light notebooks for work or entertainment and Chromebooks for education, the future of tablets will remain under constant competition, leaving the heavy lifting to larger brands such as Apple, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Tablet shipments reached 39.9 million in the first quarter with 55.2% YoY growth. Unsurprisingly, Apple remained the market leader with a market share of 31.7%. Samsung’s market share increased marginally from 19.3% in Q1 2020 to 20% in Q1 2021. Rounding out the top five were Lenovo (9.4%), Amazon (8.7%), and Huawei (6.8%).