The Booming Days Of Chromebooks Comes To An End As Market For Laptops Crashes In Q1

While Chromebooks may have been seen as a breakthrough product of the past in terms of laptops, it’s quite clear that its booming period is over.

New research presented by the IDC has shed light on how the market for Chromebook laptops has crashed during the first quarter of this year.

The report highlighted how shipments for the Chromebooks dropped by nearly 61.9% in Q1. This decline is definitely a major setback for the company, as we already witnessed a massive decline of 63.6% in the last quarter of 2021.

The sudden fall in shipments left market analyst Ryan Reith with no choice but to mention through a breaking announcement via his Twitter account that all shipments of Chromebooks had fallen beyond repair.

As a whole, the report delineated how the company vendors could only manage to ship 5 million units during this quarter, while we saw nearly 13 million shipments go out in the previous quarter. But we’d also like to point out how HP saw the largest fall in shipments for Q1.

Astonishingly, these figures are definitely a major change from what we all witnessed back in 2020. And that’s when Chromebooks recorded massive growth at a time when the pandemic was in full swing and working remotely was the call of the day.

There were schools making affordable laptop purchases on a regular basis as online teaching or virtual learning became the norm. But we did see a dry period for the demand for laptops towards the mid of 2021. The reason being, schools and the respective governments just couldn’t cope with the increasing demand for laptop purchases to carry on with the work.

IDC mentioned on Friday how trends clearly delineate how markets relating to Chromebooks are saturated in the US. If there is any room for the growth of these laptops, it’s probably those countries lying in the Asia-Pacific area.

The reason could potentially be related to how these areas are actually investing big in providing education through digital means.

One IDC analyst says he’s not surprised at the current market trends because the fall in demand seen in the last few quarters has caused a massive buildup in inventory.

The only way out is putting an end to supply to help clear out stock, with help from the marketing industry of course. Therefore, till then, we can only hope that bulk buying through the educational sector starts to pick up the pace.
Remember, another reason as explained by IDC analysts for a fall in shipments is related to vendors being keener on supplying Windows 11. They’re more expensive in costs and hence there’s a greater margin to make more profit when compared to affordable Chromebooks.

This coupled with a rise in logistical expenses and shortages in supply chains makes matters worse for Chromebooks. To be more specific, laptops from Windows usually range between $1000 to $2000, and that’s a much more enticing offer.

In an industry that continues to be bombarded with pressures from inflation, vendors are trying to make the best of an already grim situation.


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