Recently, Canalys released its latest report on the sales performance of PCs, tablets, and Chromebooks in the first quarter of 2022. In comparison to the first quarter of 2021, sales fell 3% to 118.1 million units. However, shipments are still strong compared to the sales before the COVID-19 pandemic. The three-year CAGR (compound annual growth rate) from the first quarter of 2019 was 12%. This doesn’t include Chromebooks, of which global shipments in the first quarter of 2022 dropped by a massive 60% year over year.
Not surprisingly, Apple leads the global tablet market with sales of 14.88 million units, down 2% year on year. The market share of the Cupertino-based company is 38.2%. Samsung ranked second with shipments of 7.86 million units and a market share of 20.4%. Amazon climbed to third place, which previously belonged to Lenovo. Amazon’s shipments are 3.57 million. Its tablet shipments rose 3.3% year over year due to heavy discounts on Amazon’s Fire tablets. Lenovo is in the fourth position with about 3 million units shipped, but shipments fell 20% from the first quarter of last year. Huawei took the fifth spot with 1.68 million units shipped, capturing a 4.4 percent market share.
In the first quarter of 2022, Chromebooks shipped 4.9 million units worldwide. We see such a powerful sales performance because many students bought cheap Chromebooks for remote online learning at home. In the first quarter of this year, the market was close to saturation, resulting in a sharp decline in Chromebook shipments. Canalys noted that North America accounted for 72% of global Chromebook shipments. In this market, Chromebook shipments fell 64% in the first quarter of 2022.
Despite a 62% drop in Chromebook shipments, Lenovo managed to ship 1.22 million Chromebooks globally and held the lead with a 24.9% market share. Acer and Dell ranked second and third with a market share of 23.1% and 17.9%, respectively. At the same time, Acer shipped 1.13 million units and Dell shipped 876,000 units. HP’s shipments fell the most, down 82% compared to the first quarter of 2021, grabbing a 15.8% share with 775,000 units. ASUS shipped 460,000 units with a market share of 9.5%. However, all Chromebook brands declined during the quarter. Acer fell 20.9%, Dell fell 12.8%, ASUS fell 47.7%, and HP fell the most at 82%.
As for the forecasts, supply chain pressures in the global tablet and PC market will increase due to the war in Russia and Ukraine and China’s COVID-19-related lockdown. Demand for Chromebooks is expected to rise in the Asia Pacific, and education deployments in the region are expected to start catering to price-sensitive users. These markets are hammering out digital plans that will drive more Chromebook sales.
By the way, Indonesia has started an initiative to locally produce Chromebooks for domestic education and export.
