Chromebooks and tablets are the growth winners in Q3 2020 according to Canalys report

This growth figure is driven by tablets, notebooks, and associated device types with all categories of desktop PC (apart from AiO) continuing to lose market share. Chromebooks underwent the highest proportional growth at 122%, although they still only made up 9.4 million of the 124.5 million personal computing devices sold.

HP is dominating this category with just over 1/3rd of the total market share, followed by Lenovo and Dell. Lenovo had the most impressive growth at 351%, perhaps in part to the popularity of devices like the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook tablet which uses an ARM SoC and comes with removable keyboard and kickstand.

The tablet sub-category, consisting of part of the “detachables” and “slates” categories, was the next big winner at 42%. This was particularly impressive since tablet market share has been shrinking for the last five years. Unsurprisingly, Apple makes up 1/3rd of the tablets sold, thanks to the thriving app situation with Samsung and Huawei in second and third. It is interesting to note that Amazon had the smallest increase in this category, helping to reinforce the idea that tablet growth is being driven by families buying new school-at-home devices, rather than for basic media consumption.

The top three manufacturers of all personal computing (desktop, laptop, tablet, Chromebook etc.) are Lenovo (18.9%), Apple (17.7%), and HP (15%) respectively. While the Canalys report doesn’t have specific charts for desktop and laptop shipments, approximations of volume can be made using the info we do have. For example, we can see how important traditional computing is to Lenovo: 23.5 mil total – 4.2 mil tablets – 1.8 mil Chromebooks = 17.5 million desktops/laptops. While tablets are a driving force for Apple’s personal computing: 22.1 mil total – 15.2 mil tablets = 6.9 million desktops/laptops.

It will be interesting to see if Chromebooks and tablets continue this large growth as homes reach device saturation, or if we see tablets return to their decline, leaving notebooks and Chromebooks as the two main growth categories.