[German]There was a real boom in sales of Chromebooks with Google's ChromeOS in 2020. The analyst firm IDC writes in a forecast that Chromebook sales will continue to boom in 2021. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic subsiding, customers will decide whether to continue buying Chromebooks or alternative devices.
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If there is a winner in the coronavirus pandemic, it is Chromebooks running Google's ChromeOS. When the whole world was rushing to acquire inexpensive and easy-to-maintain notebooks, many schools – especially in the U.S. – turned to Chromebooks. They were already quite popular in the U.S. before that, while the fat and stodgy Windows 10 notebooks tended to stay on the shelves.
IDC sees Chromebooks boom continuing in 2021
I came across this article on the topic at The Register a few days ago. Analysts at IDC predict that Chromebook sales will increase by 33.5 percent in 2021. That means about 43.4 million of these devices will be produced.
However, the company predicts a decline in sales for 2022. That's quite a turnaround compared to the 275 percent growth that rival analyst firm Canalys saw for Chromebooks in 2020.
For tablet devices, the outlook is even worse. IDC forecasts that sales of these devices will grow by 1.8 percent in 2021 – but that's significantly less than the double-digit growth seen in 2020, according to Anuroopa Nataraj, an analyst on IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers team:
Sales of tablets and Chromebooks have surged in 2020 due to unprecedented demand for work-from-home solutions.
Anuroopa Nataraj adds that demand for affordable and versatile devices suitable for "hybrid working and learning" will remain high in 2021. In 2022, however, that should change, the analyst believes, as customers will invest their money in other products:
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After 2021, both categories will continue to struggle as demand from consumers and educational institutions is expected to slow. As restrictions are eased, consumers will begin to increase their spending on travel and other types of entertainment, which in turn will impact growth in these devices.
So it's not a swing to other devices, but simply a reorientation by consumers on what they spend their money on after the coronavirus pandemic. IDC has one more piece of good news in store: Chromebook sales would slump, but the devices have found a niche "in workspaces where high performance and legacy support are not a priority." The analysts see Chromebook sales growing again in 2025, while tablet sales are expected to slow down in the coming years.
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