The Online mode of education has become the norm for many schools and education institutions around the world. As a result, the market for Tablets and Chromebooks have seen massive growth numbers in the past year alone. During Q1, 2021, the worldwide tablet shipments was recorded at 39.9 million units, which calculates to a growth of 55.2% YoY. The Chromebook market recorded a growth too, shipping 13 million units in Q1, 2021.
Apple continues to lead the market with 12.7 million shipments during the first quarter of 2021, with a growth of 64.3% compared to the same quarter last year. Following Apple was Samsung, shipping 8.0 million units, and in third place was Lenovo with 3.8 million units. Amazon and Huawei took 4th and 5th place respectively.
Sales of Chromebooks also surged, growing and an impressive 357% YoY in Q1, 2021. The product segment has seen increased interest from schools as more manufacturers release new thin and light, affordable Chromebooks, especially in markets such as the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.
The top 5 manufacturers were HP, Lenovo, Acer, Dell and Samsung.
Commenting on the report, Anuroopa Nataraj, research analyst with IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers said:
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.