Chromebook sales train derails as market reaches saturation
- Reference: 1649935812
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/04/14/chromebook_sales/
- Source link:
Or so says the latest data from Gartner, which estimates that total unit sales into the channel fell 7.3 percent year-on-year to 77.5 million units in the first quarter. Remove Chromebooks from that equation and the market grew 3.3 percent, it said.
"Our estimate right now is 4 to 4.5 million Chromebooks shipped in 1Q22, down by the range of 64-67 percent," Mikako Kitagawa, director analyst at Gartner told The Register via email.
[2]
Signs that the wheels were coming off the Chromebook sales train were evident from the [3]third quarter of last year as the US market – which still accounts for 70-80 percent of worldwide shipments – reached saturation point.
[4]
[5]
Vendors subsequently allocated more resources to other markets as demand for the form factor waned. "Chromebook lost momentum," said Kitagawa as they could "not diversify their customer base beyond the education market."
"There were opportunities to expand into the business market during the peak pandemic. CIOs were considering to adopt Chromebook as an alternative device of Windows laptops because they market faced laptop supply shortage due the surge. But the opportunities are mostly gone for now."
[6]
Gartner expects the segment to be dominated by replacement cycles when customers want to refresh existing devices.
[7]AMD Threadripper CPU supply severely low, PC makers say
[8]Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway buys 11.4% stake in HP
[9]Microsoft brings Cloud PCs and local desktops together in Windows 365
[10]Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements
[11]Is that a meteor crashing to Earth? No, it's Chromebook makers coming back to reality
All the biggest sellers of Chromebook reported declines in the quarter: Lenovo's total sales, including Chromebooks, fell 12.6 percent to 18.2 million, and HP was down 17.8 percent to 15.8 million. Gartner did not split out Chromebook-specific shipments for the vendors but said both were impacted.
In addition to Chromebooks, the general consumer part of the PC industry is slowing against the shipment pace at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. This is due to a tougher comparison period a year ago and people spending more on things other than tech (inc holidays), said Gartner.
Business PCs expanded in Q1, however, as companies continued to allow their workforce to work remotely and in the office as part of a hybrid set-up. Desktop shipments went up and Dell was a beneficiary of this, growing total shipments 5 percent to 13.73 million units. It helped, said Gartner, that Dell has a "relatively minor presence in the declining Chromebook and consumer PC segments."
Run Windows on a Chromebook: All the details. Not so fast, home user... [12]READ MORE
Marco Andresen, global chief operating office at Lenovo, told us that he thinks the Chromebook market has life in it yet.
"Clearly there is not the same growth we have experienced during the first year and a half of the pandemic but maybe that's somehow logically explained by a temporary saturation of the education market. However the market is still quite large and all the education units sold will have to be replaced after some years. On top there is an increased interest for Chrome in enterprise, which we still have to watch closely."
Asked if CIOs are still considering Chromebooks, he said: "I think some are. It's for sure a slow process (apparently) but I am not sure the boat has sailed. Ultimately it's about how much focus Google will put on this to determine 'where the boat is' I believe."
[13]
We asked HP and Acer to comment but neither were immediately available. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/11/pc_sales_slowing_idc/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YlhFMhO4CGrh1qCnMSo84QAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/13/chroembook_sales_crash/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YlhFMhO4CGrh1qCnMSo84QAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YlhFMhO4CGrh1qCnMSo84QAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YlhFMhO4CGrh1qCnMSo84QAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/08/amd_threadripper_supply/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/07/warren_buffets_berkshire_hathaway_buys/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/06/microsoft_365_cloud/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/31/windows_11_stalls/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/13/chroembook_sales_crash/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/21/run_windows_on_a_chromebook/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YlhFMhO4CGrh1qCnMSo84QAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I was more shocked at how high the numbers are
Agree entirely. That's a heck of a lot.
Re: I was more shocked at how high the numbers are
Every kid in the developed world without an iPad ended up being bought one to do school stuff from home, everyone with an iPad got bought one cos the school work is on Chrome
"[could] not diversify their customer base beyond the education market."
Yep. Apple is notoriously bad for business networks and integration. Having a Windows network is bad enough, a hybrid Windows-Apple networkd must be exercise in frustration.
Apple shines, however, in creation and the arts in general, which are mostly solo endeavours.
Supply chain?
Any hints of supply chain issues limiting the shippable quantities? I would bet that companies shifted to piecing together higher-margin boxes based on the components they can get rather than low price, low margin Chromebooks.
Re: Supply chain?
Possibly more inventory in the chromebook supply chain.
If you are making cutting edge laptops with the latest screens, GPUs and processors you don't have a lot of stock on hand because production is ramping up and the models change rapidly.
If you are making bog standard chromebooks by the million you are likely to have longer stable production runs of parts and so much bigger parts stocks.
Not even on my radar
Chromebooks would really have to improve to entice me to get one as my text laptop. ChromeOS is the main reason but at that £600 ish pricepoint I want for my day to day laptop the specs on something like a pixelbook don't really seem to jump out at me, and this is coming from a person with a pixel 6 and pixel buds so would love the integration.
Re: Not even on my radar
The pixelbook never really made sense. If you are buying a simple webrowser+keyboard why do you need a 11th generation CPU?
Buying $99 refurb Lenovo/Dell base spec 4Gb laptops for the kids to break on the other hand.
It's just another Gartner Guestimate.
[1]Nothing to see here!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKnX5wci404
Right tool for the jobby
With MS taking their main desktop products to 365 land and the general under usage that most workers put their devices too, I'm surprised they're not seen as a decent alternative for corporations to fit out their workforces with and save huge amounts of money in the process.
Decent starter units come in around £150 against our current corporate Windows laptops at around the £700 mark!
Saying that, I am increasingly biased here as I really, really fluffing hate supporting muggles with Windows laptops nowadays, especially in the corporate arena with anything other than domain admin rights, which I don't got in a tiered environment at 2nd line level.
This isn't helped by said muggles seemingly getting generally dumber as time goes on, for any number of reasons.
My experience and that of others I know who use them is that they're sleek and slick and provide pretty good coverage for personal productivity and home use for almost all tasks bar bloaty Adobe/Photoplop and serious music tools tho, saying that, my only paid for platform for the former is available on Linux and works well on my workstation as the APPROPRIATE tool for the job.
Also, I'm just not that picky about imaging and video tools, cos it ain't exactly rocket science, is it!
And breathe!
Using a Chromebook is like a punishment because they're so limited. The only reason they have education is that the users have no recourse, the idea the Chromebooks were going to challenge Windows, Apple or any other kind of notebooks was something cooked up in the marketing departments of Chromebook sellers.
I was more shocked at how high the numbers are
I knew "Chromebooks were a thing in education", but 2 large vendors still shifting 34 million still feels pretty significant.