Chromebook sales in recession: Market saturation blamed as shipments collapse more than 63% in Q4
- Reference: 1643649306
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/01/31/chromebook_sales_in_recession_market/
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Unit sales into distributors and retailers plunged 63.6 per cent globally to 4.8 million Chromebooks, says [1]IDC . This is the second quarter in a row that sales of the skinny portables have shrunk.
"Much of the initial demand for Chromebooks has been satiated in primary markets like the US and Europe and this has led to a slowdown in overall shipments," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC.
[2]
"Supply has also been unusually tight for Chromebooks as component shortages have led vendors to prioritise Windows machines due to their higher price tags, further suppressing Chromebook shipments on a global scale."
[3]Microsoft touts Windows 11 SE: A locked-down OS to give Chromebooks a run for their money in schools
[4]Even desktops showed up on growth radar in global PC shipment stakes for 2021
[5]Apple is beginning to undo decades of Intel, x86 dominance in PC market
[6]Google is designing its own Arm-based processors for 2023 Chromebooks – report
[7]Google fixes 'Chromebork' one-character code typo that prevented Chrome OS logins
Q4 was a bloodbath for all brands: market leader Acer reported shipments of 1.3 million Chromebooks, down 43.3 per cent, followed by Dell with 1 million, down 63.6 per cent. Lenovo shipped 200,000, down 73.5 per cent, and Samsung shipped 600,000, down 22.4 per cent.
HP, previously the biggest seller of Chromies, shipped just 500,000 in the quarter, down 86.7 per cent from the 3.5 million models it shipped a year ago. HP was caught out caught out by crashing demand in the summer during the Back To School season and might have inventory still swilling around.
[8]
[9]
According to HP CEO Enrique Lores, talking on a conference call in November to discuss its Q4 of fiscal 2021 ended October, the company steered the product mix and margin to PCs with higher average sales prices.
"We have been very effectively managing both, driving the components that we have toward the categories where we saw the highest value for the company, which in general [includes] the commercial categories and the high end of the consumer side."
[10]
The Others segment, the collection of also-rans that didn't break into the top five, was down 31.8 per cent to 700,000 units, said IDC.
Despite the relative collapse in the second half of 2021 Chromebook, shipments for the whole year were still positive, growing 13.5 per cent to 37 million. HP led the pack with 10.2 million units, up 9.3 per cent, Lenovo grew 23.4 per cent to 8.3 million, Acer grew 4.6 per cent to 6.4 million, Dell declined 5.2 per cent to 5.4 million, and Samsung was up 77.2 per cent to 3.2 million. Others was up 19.5 per cent to 3.4 million.
Chromebook [11]shipments fell in calendar Q3 for the first time since their debut in 2011, and now a drop for the second consecutive quarter suggests the market may have reached its 10-year peak.
[12]
The Chromebook boom is over. The US had traditionally accounted for the vast majority of sales – around 70 per cent – and that market is nearing saturation, a year after Microsoft launched its own Chromebook killer. ®
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[1] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS48826122
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YfhqGzLoW3QgLfhIWGvB7wAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/10/microsoft_windows_11se/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/12/canalys_pc_2021/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/apple_arm_m1_intel_x86_market/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/02/google_chromebook_chips/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/23/chromebork_bug_google/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YfhqGzLoW3QgLfhIWGvB7wAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YfhqGzLoW3QgLfhIWGvB7wAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YfhqGzLoW3QgLfhIWGvB7wAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/13/chroembook_sales_crash/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YfhqGzLoW3QgLfhIWGvB7wAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Unsustainable
Chromebooks made the most sense for the education market which doesn't buy equipment in the 4th quarter (other than replacements). I strongly suspect that 2020's 4th quarter boom was almost all related to distance learning under Covid. A better analysis would have included, at least 2019's and possibly 2018's 4th quarter.
Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft's Surface for Education push has any effect on Chromebooks.
Re: Unsustainable
Yeah, we in education hear that pretty often. Chromebooks making sense in education. It doesn't really hold up outside the the "we can't afford to put anything in the students hands" part of the problem.
We look at them every couple of years. Most of the cheap ones should be shipped straight to e-waste and by the time you get to the price point the better ones are at, you get into striking distance of a cheap laptop or a mid range tablet.
That's just the money part though. The bigger issues is that with Chromebooks you end up teaching to the tools. That is to say your teachers have to plan their lessons around the devices they have. That is true Chromebooks aside, but the more general purpose the devices are the more the teacher can do with them. Also the more the students can do with the skills they learn. It also comes in handy when you need to go to remote learning on three days notice.
We had access to decent gear, and we saw it coming. Much bigger fish then us got run over in the middle of the street because their chromebook fleets couldn't run the curriculum and were underspecced for desktop replacement or heavy videoconferencing. Tiny screens and trash webcams that saved all of 2-3 dollars to the manufacturer meant the devices face planted in remote learning.
Re: Unsustainable
Buy cheap, get cheap. Chromebooks, Windows, whatever. We can't blame the existence of Chromebooks for sloppy purchasing decisions. If ChromeOS didn't exist, the same or worse Windows hardware purchases would have been made. There's always opportunity costs and budget limits.
Chromebooks' limited functionality cuts both ways. Organisations like mine that are hooked into Windows devote a lot of resources on what is called security and management but could also be seen as simply downgrading the open unused functionality of their Windows fleet down to near Chromebook levels. Top down, it's a bit weird.
All electronics are future garbage, but these things seemed like they had a 2 year life 5 years ago. I have had a few conversations with people who rolled out Chromebooks pre-pandemic, and the square peg in a round hole problem is still a problem no matter how cheap the devices are.
Those guys bought a lot of laptops for people that needed something that could do more that Zoom
I bought a 15" one of these for peanuts. bloody brilliant little thing once you accept that Google already knows yours deepest personal secrets even before you ever touched a Chromebook.