While the world is still combating the Coronavirus pandemic, the sales of tablets and Chromebooks have remained robust. The pandemic had initially fueled the demand for these products back in 2020, which are still seeing a surge in the first quarter of this year.
According to an IDC report, tablets saw an excellent first quarter with its shipments reaching 39.9 million units in Q1 2021. This marked a 55.2 percent year on year growth, which is a level of rise not seen since the third quarter of 2013 when the tablet market had grown by 56.9 percent year on year. On the other hand, Chromebooks shipments also remained robust with over 13 million units during the same time, up from 2.8 million units from back in the first quarter of last year.
Anuroop Nataraj, research analyst at IDC added that “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.”
Furthermore, the growth of the tablet market was also driven by schools across the globe showing strong preference for the product due to its form factor, low cost, and easy manageability. Meanwhile, another IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani added that “”There’s no doubt that Chromebooks have supplanted tablets in many education markets. However, price and the dependence on cloud services have prevented them from becoming mainstays in all regions.”
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