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Hardware

Chromebooks on 'Massive Downturn' from Pandemic-fueled Heights (arstechnica.com) 57

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Although PCs are still selling at a greater volume than before the COVID-19 pandemic, demand is starting to drop. In Q3 2021, shipments of laptops, desktops, and tablets dropped 2 percent compared to Q3 2020, according to numbers that researcher Canalys shared on Monday. Interest in Chromebooks dropped the most, with a reported decline as high as 36.9 percent. Demand for tablets also fell, showing a 15 percent year-on-year decline, according to Canalys. From a report: Both Canalys and the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker shared Q3 numbers for Chromebooks and tablets on Monday. Canalys said 5.8 million Chromebooks shipped globally during this time, while the IDC said the number was 6.5 million. Both pointed to a huge decline compared to Q3 2020. Canalys reported the drop at 36.9 percent, and IDC pegged it at 29.8 percent. Canalys said that Q3 Chromebook sales took a "major downturn" as the education markets in the US, Japan, and elsewhere became saturated. Demand lessened as government programs supporting remote learning went away, the research group said. After reaching a high of 18 percent market share since the start of 2020, Chromebooks reportedly represented just 9 percent of laptop shipments in Q3 2021.
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Chromebooks on 'Massive Downturn' from Pandemic-fueled Heights More

Chromebooks on 'Massive Downturn' from Pandemic-fueled Heights

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  • saturated market and long-tail software issues (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rkhalloran ( 136467 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @10:21AM (#61954043) Homepage

    There's still a ton of educational software that is specific to Windows, so at best Chromebooks can act as a remote client to a Windows session Somewhere Else. As said above, that slice of the market is likely full at this point, and connectivity issues through the pandemic have shown up the primary issue with using Chromebooks. Combine that with the chip shortages and it's no surprise the sales are down.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @10:25AM (#61954057)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Chromebook market was squeezed by cheap Windows laptops above and large Android tablets with keyboard case below.
      I don't think there's anything a Chromebook could do that wasn't covered by one or the other choice (at relatively similar prices).

  • and if not heads will roll. Amazing how many companies have been eaten alive by their investors when the gravy train slowed down even a little, or if just their assets got to be big enough to be worth selling off. Google of course is too big for that at this point, but if you ever wonder what happened to those super cool science fiction anthologies like the one Asimov published, they were completely dependent on a single distribution company (yes, all of them) and that company owned a lot of land. A venture

  • When there's a chip shortage there's no point wasting good hardware on a glorified terminal. The fabs are busy producing high value chips instead of whatever crap is in Chromebooks.

    • Most of that crap was manufactured years ago or on a larger process node. The competition on the foundry line isn't there for these chips, which explains why their price has remained stable for the last two years.

      Solid capacitors on the other hand, really hard to get right now and you can't build a laptop without them.

  • I reckon Google's reputation has been soiled by killing off products and excessive ads. Or is that just me? :)

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @10:43AM (#61954111)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Teckla ( 630646 )

      I reckon Google's reputation has been soiled by killing off products and excessive ads. Or is that just me? :)

      I think you are right on the money here.

      Now that Chromebooks can run Linux, I thought a Chromebook could be a great alternative to a traditional laptop, to the point that I spent a lot of time researching them.

      However, ultimately, I didn't buy a Chromebook because:

      1. I have precisely zero confidence that the Linux you can run on the Chromebook is any good. It might be stuck on old hacked kernels and/or only have access to old/crappy repositories.

      2. And, most important, because I don't trust Google to treat

  • But Macbook sales are up (Score:3)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @10:30AM (#61954071)

    Is that due to the 'stickiness of the Apple ecosystem,' the quality (hardware and software) of Macbooks, or just a 'fashion statement'? What's clear is that Chromebooks and Macbooks represent a very distinct choice for consumers in what they value.

    Revenue here is definitely correlated with sales (graph of Mac revenue since 1997), it's not just "Macs are more expensive." https://i0.wp.com/sixcolors.co... [wp.com]

    • Is that due to the 'stickiness of the Apple ecosystem,' the quality (hardware and software) of Macbooks, or just a 'fashion statement'? What's clear is that Chromebooks and Macbooks represent a very distinct choice for consumers in what they value.

      Revenue here is definitely correlated with sales (graph of Mac revenue since 1997), it's not just "Macs are more expensive." https://i0.wp.com/sixcolors.co... [wp.com]

      Some relative "upgraded" my parents business from windows PCs to google devices . . . I was surprised that they actually bought Lenovo boxes. It became unusable as there was a gmail bug where printing left a bar on the side took up half of a page, and the boxes could be upgraded no more.

      I was impressed when I (with a few headaches) swapped in a nice little ASUS device and my Dad was ready to go.

      I was able to put in a 10yr old macbook pro after a battery & memory upgrade (added a SSD as well) and my M

      • With the latest Mac OS release, Apple finally put my '14 Macbook Pro on their 'no longer supported' list. I'm using that machine now to enter this, it works fine. I'm also doing work on SketchUp on this machine, with good response. (Actually, it's running Mojave, because there are some 32 bat apps that I can't or won't upgrade to the 64 bit requirement.) Now my '14 got a new battery earlier this year, and I expect to use it for several more years at least as a travel machine. (This has the SD card slot

        • I miss the "leasing" -- you buy it, add applecare which is 3/3 warranty and support bound to the serial number and sell it to someone else after 2 years with a 1 year warranty. AppleCare+, not so much.

    • You carefully avoided the fact that Apple is in the first year of a platform transition from Intel to their M1 CPU. There were likely a fair number of people that put off buying a new Apple MacBook until the new CPU was out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by acroyear ( 5882 )

        and then throw in how the M1 macbooks and mac minis are *cheaper* than their intel predecessors...

      • You more carefully avoided
        1. the graph I posted shows the last 25 years of sales, not just the last year of sales.
        2. the new M1 14" and 16" machines, which are the real "MacBook Pros" are not part of Apple's FY 2021, which ended Sept 30. So the last year does include the initial M1 MacBook Air and 13" MacBook Pros, but not the larger machines.

  • ChromeOS is good enough for everyday use (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slaker ( 53818 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @10:47AM (#61954119)

    Most people aren't running multi-hour renders in Resolve or compiling their own applications. They're sending messages, making documents and screwing around on social media. Chromebooks are damned near perfect for that. Even the crummy Celeron-based units don't really bog down from that kind of workload, at least not if they have 4GB RAM. ChromeOS may be spying on every single thing you do, but so does your phone. They don't get hot, they're cheap enough to take everywhere (I usually bring one when I travel, instead of my Thinkpad), and if they can't do all the real work, at least they can remote in to something that can.

    As a commodity tool, these devices seem to come in every possible form factor, from 8" to 15" screens, touch or not, tablet, 2 in 1 or laptop. They don't really have the nuisance maintenance issues we deal with on desktops, and they're priced right for what they are. I absolutely advocate for ChromeOS for home computing devices. I wish their whole infrastructure wasn't controlled by Google, but they're really a great middle point between a phone and thick client system.

    • I've been using a Lenovo Yoga Chromebook with a 4K screen as my daily driver for more than a year now. With a moderately powerful machine, ChromeOS is plenty responsive. If you don't want to sell your firstborn for a Mac and can live with something like 90% of the experience for 2/3rds the price, it's a very good option.

      Of course web-based applications are the trend, even for coding work, but I was surprised by how useful it has been to have support for Android and Linux apps. Integration has gotten steadil

  • Chromebooks don't have a real niche... (Score:3)

    by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @10:58AM (#61954143)

    When people needed something... anything to work at home during the pandemic, a Chromebook was better than nothing. However, with Chromebook prices going over $1000 for some models, people are realizing they are paying the same amount of cash for a glorified terminal as they would for a Windows laptop that can actually do stuff independent of the Internet. Yes, one can use development mode and run Linux, but that isn't what most users would want to do on a day to day basis, and Windows is a platform that pretty much everyone knows and find some type of support for.

    Even on the enterprise side, Chromebooks are not great for remote work, even for logging into a VDI. Even Windows S is better in that regard.

    Chromebooks do have a niche in schools, due to the price breaks, limited stuff students can do on them, and the 24/7 monitoring that can be done.

    Niche wise, other than schools and people who really just want to browse the web and use no other applications, there isn't much functionality a Chomebook brings to the table. Windows laptops in the same price range are a lot more useful.

    • other than schools

      Whoah there! Schools are the chromebook niche. Thus chomebooks were one of the first things to spike with Covid shutdowns. (I had to buy a couple more myself - not easy at the time).

      We are going to see this story repeated in many, many industries over the year or two - the explosion in demand from Covid in particular market niches wanes. In some cases just as supply was finally starting to catch up with the increased temporary demand.

      Hard to imagine now, but even the great "chip

      • Yes, the great fibre build out happened and simultaneously video compression also happened.

      • I agree with you, there will be a glut either after the spike is done, or people just do without.

        But some things will likely change. The chip "shortage" woke up a lot of companies, especially car makers. I'm sure that a company like TSMC will get grants to ensure that they will be making new fabs, even if there is an insane amount of excess supply. It all depends if businesses bother changing their ways, or go back to expecting all their goodies to come from Taiwan or China, where on ship stuck in a cana

      • Hard to imagine now, but even the great "chips" shortage will end this way, a couple years from now. Whoever is last to get their shiny new $7BN fab online is likely to be stuck with a massive white elephant.

        Doubtful, since the US Gov't is putting aside billions of dollars to subsidize new US Chip Fabs in their (stalled) multi-trillion dollar spending bills...

        Getting a heavily-subsidized Chip Fab will help juice Big Chips bottom line.

  • Outside of education they suck and aren't really cheaper than a basic x86 laptop running Windows.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slaker ( 53818 )

      It's possible to get new Chromebooks with 12 hour battery life and 1080p IPS screens for under $200. Entry level Windows notebooks start at around $300, and probably have lower screen resolutions, two hour batteries and the crippled S-mode version of Windows (which, yes, is trivial to fix, but only if you know what it is).

  • Chromebooks retain value longer. (Score:3)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @11:58AM (#61954287)

    With Chromebooks there is nothing to clutter up like with Windows. In fact, you have to be a bonafide computer expert with the explicit desire to push a Chromebook to its limits using with crouton, Linux for Chrombooks or similar exotic stuff. It is also quite likely that a regular user is genuinely happy with a Chromebook for a longer period of time. This is also why I by and large consider the whole Google / Android / ChromeOS Ecosphere to basically be the poor mans Apple/macOS/iOS Ecosphere.

    In many areas Chromebooks are actually even less a hassle than Apple Laptops and simply the better option. Chromebooks are "open, login, works" even moreso than most Apple products. With Apple I pay obscene amounts of money and still am presented with lock-in adware, MS Windows style (Apple Music). On my current workmachine I had to actually install an open source system service app to prevent the keyboards play button from opening Apple Music and bugging me with ads everytime I pressed it. This on a 2500+ Euro MacBook Pro. No joke.

    OTOH a bloated Windows installation is quite often the type-A reason for people to get a shiny new PC. Which is why classic hardware vendors love Windows. Especially when MS bloats Windows all by themselves for a new release. Buying a new Windows PC after writeoff is through has become tradition and standard fare in most corporations, hence the nice turnover enabled/enforced by MS, which the entire WinTel industry is so grateful for.

    Most of my PCs are refurbished and run Linux. One of my powerhouse laptops is 8+ years old and runs current Ubuntu LTS without a hitch. Likewise my 5 year old ARM Chromebook still works exactly like on day one, if not even faster due to updates. ... I doubt that would be the case within the Windows world.

    • With Apple I pay obscene amounts of money and still am presented with lock-in adware
      Apple has no adware.

      On my current workmachine I had to actually install an open source system service app to prevent the keyboards play button from opening Apple Music and bugging me with ads everytime I pressed it. This on a 2500+ Euro MacBook Pro. No joke.

      You could have simple fixed that in the settings. As everyone who is using a Mac as "working machine" makes F1 - F12 into real function keys and uses the "fn" key to togg

  • I used a chrome book for a few years to access a non-profit's google suite-based infrastructire, but about a year ago it started telling me that my chromeOS (?) was end of life, and could not be upgraded...

    That kinda sucked - the hardware/form factor was nice (old Acer), it can run Linux, I guess, but seems like a bother...

  • "hey, everybody gets a chromebook in 2020"
    "hey, we sold lots of chromebooks in 2020"
    "hey, uh...keep using the same chromebook you have in 2021, as it is still good"
    "hey, uh...nobody's buying chromebooks in 2021"
    "media and wall street: nobody could have foreseen that..."
    "/. : what the hell school did you idiots go to so I can make sure my kid doesn't go there?"

    reminds me of Bob Cringley's discussion on IBM when they converted from mainframe rentals to mainframe sales. lots of money up front but then...well, everybody that wanted to buy their mainframe did and so the sales suddenly stopped. and IBM seemed totally unable to see that inevitability.

  • On a related note (Score:3)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @01:17PM (#61954557) Journal
    ARM is saying if you haven't already purchased your electronics for the upcoming heathen holiday, you will probably not get them in time. According to Simon Segar, they are seeing chip delays of up to 60 weeks [bbc.com].
  • Are they showing up on the used market ?

  • People will start to run out of the glut of money they saved up during covid and will switch away from goods and services.

  • There are some really good values for Chromebooks right now if you're on the fence about getting one. I just grabbed a nicely spec'd Chromebook with a touchscreen for around $150 for an elderly parent to replace a dog--absolute dog--of a laptop that seemed to get slower and slower.

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