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Hardware

Chromebook Demand is Plummeting as the Pandemic Eases (arstechnica.com) 78

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
A global deceleration of laptop sales is being linked in a new report from market research firm Trendforce to increasing vaccination rates and a corresponding decrease in remote work and remote learning. From a report: According to the findings, demand for Chromebooks slid by over 50 percent during one month since July. And notebook shipments for the remainder of the year are expected to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the shifting demand from businesses. Trendforce said that interest for ChromeOS-powered laptops within the last year had primarily been driven by remote learning. The analyst pointed to rising vaccination rates in North America, Europe, and Japan throughout the second half of 2021 as recently slowing demand for Chromebooks.

After being a "primary driver" of overall laptop shipments in the first half of 2021, Chromebook shipments dropped by over 50 percent during one month in the second half of the year. And because Chromebooks represent a "relatively high share" of HP's and Samsung's overall laptop shipments, the OEMs' shipments are predicted to fall by 10 to 20 percent from the first half of the year to the second half. Still, it's not all downhill from here for Chromebooks -- Trendforce still expects a total of 36 million devices shipped in 2021. "The US FCC released the Emergency Connectivity Fund, which totals US$7.17 billion, in July in order to facilitate the purchase of such equipment as notebooks, tablets, and network connectivity devices by schools and libraries," Trendforce said. "This fund will likely sustain the demand for Chromebooks for the next year."
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Chromebook Demand is Plummeting as the Pandemic Eases More

Chromebook Demand is Plummeting as the Pandemic Eases

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  • Shocked? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by anoncoward69 ( 6496862 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @04:10PM (#61845873)
    Once everyone has one that wants/needs it that rushed out a the beginning of the pandemic to buy one, there is no need for further purchases for the life of the product, perhaps 2-3 years.
    • It probably won't be just chromebooks, but the entire consumer electronics industry. At the start of the pandemic and "lockdowns" people probably bought a bunch of new toys or upgraded existing systems to deal with being stuck at home and virtual life. There won't be as much need for new toys and upgrades till everything that was bought at the start is past it's useful life.

    • Homer Simpson: Yeah, that's right, Barney. This year, I invested in pumpkins. They've been going up the whole month of October and I got a feeling they're going to peak right around January. Then, bang! That's when I'll cash in.

  • When did the pandemic start easing? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @04:13PM (#61845881)
    Because the numbers I am seeing sure don't show it.
    Stocking up, and getting ready for the next lockdown here.

    • There's still the chip shortage going on. Plus all the saber-rattling.

    • Sounds like you live in a red state.

      • Re:When did the pandemic start easing? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @06:38PM (#61846359)

        Sounds like you live in a red state.

        Could you imagine if AIDS came out in 2019? Republicans would come out in favor of unprotected gay buttsecks because "Muh Freedumbs", and Guvmint don't tell me wut to do! Safe Secks iz Tirrineee!

        • Sounds like you live in a red state.

          Could you imagine if AIDS came out in 2019? Republicans would come out in favor of unprotected gay buttsecks because "Muh Freedumbs", and Guvmint don't tell me wut to do! Safe Secks iz Tirrineee!

          Hah! Sometimes the truth comes disguised as a troll.

          Next up - since wearing a mask is the actions of a tyrannical criminal state, like the nasties, is the same true of all clothing in public? Shouldn't we all have the constitutional right to freely doff our clothing anywhere we want? I mean, people are saying.

      • I live in California and not only is the pandemic not easing but even very blue counties are experiencing waves of lockdowns. Every time we ease up there's a surge because both red and blue people are fucking stupid. Cucks, all, frankly; all are getting fucked over by their party and coming back for more.

    • Denmark, Sweden, Norway are back to normal. The Netherlands are moving there, no more distancing, but unfortunately they are nearing about with certificates. Malta and Portugal are also doing fine now, but they have excellent vaccination rates, best in Europe as far as I can tell. Portugal is at 88% of the total population, I guess they don't have too many kids, normally the age bracket from 0 to 12 is about 13% if the population, making it impossible to go beyond 87% vaccination rate...

      • Vaccination is obviously great for reducing deaths, and keeping people out of hospital, but I question if high vax rates are responsible for some countries more back to normal than others or reporting low infection rates.

        Israel is the key example here - very high vax rates yet plenty of infection. It may just be that they are doing a better job of *detecting* the infections, or maybe people there have given up on social distancing?

        • Agreed, Israel is an example that goes against the stream, it seems. It's not really clear what's going on, because their data isn't open, or so I read. BTW it's not due to better detection, they have higher hospitalisation rates. I tend to think that I people are in hospital, the diagnosis is going to be done one way or another, whether it's due to Covid19 or not. In Western Europe (I follow the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy practically daily, due to ha

          • Interesting - didn't realize that Israel was seeing more severe/hospitalized cases among vaccinated. I remember near the beginning of this it was *really* bad in northern Italy - much more so than other countries - not sure if they got to the bottom of that.

            • I can offer you some insight to that. First, they don't seem to have extensive patient relocation system. This means that even local outbreaks can mean triage. Then, they're very Catholic. Every life must be saved. I recall here in Switzerland and in the Netherlands (just to give 2 examples), during the first wave, doctors were saying that the elderly should consider staying and perhaps dying at (elderly) home instead of coming to the hospital. I remember a very upset Italian doctor venting at the Dutch for

  • Thing needed because of Event is in reduced demand as Event ends

    Who could have foreseen this?

    • I don't foresee Event ending any time soon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      I think more accurate would be "thing needed because of event is in reduced demand once everyone has one"

      Though again who could possibly foreseen this!

  • Remote work? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lionchild ( 581331 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @04:41PM (#61845981) Journal

    So...just curious: Whose using a Chromebook for Remote Work? Honestly?

    • "interest for ChromeOS-powered laptops within the last year had primarily been driven by remote learning"

      Schools.

      • The article says, "...a corresponding decrease in remote work and remote learning." So, again, I go back to asking which 'remote work' is actually using a Chromebook? I know schools are using it for remote learning, they're using them from in-class learning. School usage likely hasn't changed in 6-12, but K-5 may be slowing down.

        What actual 'remote work' is using a Chromebook? I'm actually curious.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jabuzz ( 182671 )

          Depends. You can SSH into a remote machine using a Chromebook, which could cover me. However you can also get an RDP client for a Chromebook so that would work too. Then you can get things like call centre software that is entirely web based so that would work just fine on a Chromebook too. I would imagine that Office 365 works just fine on a Chromebook as well, because it seems to work just fine on a Chrome browser in Linux. Obviously the Google office apps work too.

          You need to think of a Chromebook as a p

        • which 'remote work' is actually using a Chromebook?

          Lots of people at Google (where I work). Most employees of enterprises that use GSuite (Google Docs, etc.) heavily would be productive on a Chromebook. Even for those that don't use GSuite, a Chromebook makes a fine videoconferencing terminal (for Zoom, Teams, Skype, etc., not just Google Meet), as well as being fine for any web-based internal applications, e.g. MS Office 360. And from the perspective of the IT department, if employees can be productive on Chromebooks they're the ideal machine, because mana

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Unless you’re doing something cpu bound a chrome book is fine for many people. You could always remotely login to a more powerful desktop.

      • I suppose if you were doing a beefy VDI implementation, or a Citrix gateway that has a public face.. I've simply never seen anyone use a Chromebook to access something like that. I'm not saying it can't be done, I've simply never seen it, or heard of anyone deploying it that way.

        I would think if you're accessing a more powerful desktop, you've got to be securing your endpoints and the connection/VPN between them. While internet connections are pretty widespread, they're not yet available everywhere; so it

        • You don't really need any sort of beefy infrastructure on the server side, since most major VPN implementations also have an Android or Chrome OS version. In my case I need Cisco Anyconnect, and that has a Chrome OS client. When I work from home I basically use my home machine as a web browser, terminal client, and RDP client over VPN. Chrome OS does all of those things, in a package that only cost a few hundred bucks and has pretty good battery life.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jabuzz ( 182671 )

          I think in a pandemic working from home scenario we can reasonably take an internet connection as a given. Sure not so useful on a plane or train, but that is not what the Chromebook is doing. It's providing a cheap, easy to manage secure platform to use web based applications and/or get a remote desktop onto something else. Basically no internet connection then no working from home.

          Finally the concept of needing a VPN to secure your endpoint if using something like Citrix, AVD or similar is failing to unde

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      So...just curious: Whose using a Chromebook for Remote Work? Honestly?

      A lot of people apparently - there's jobs where people basically travel with just an iPad to get their work done. After all, most of the work a CEO does is just email and meetings and such, to which an iPad or a Chromebook is more than adequate.

      There is also schools, where Chromebooks are extremely popular and I'm sure more than a few students no longer need them because they've return to in-person learning.

      There are also plenty of people

    • There are a lot of businesses who use the approach of remote desktopping into virtual machines in order to protect business data better. My brother is in a law firm that does that. All of his computer work is performed via remote desktop from a browser. Whether the browser is on a chromebook, Mac, or Windows PC is completely irrelevant. He chooses his laptops solely based on the keyboard feel.
    • I personally don’t, but I’m a hospital based doctor. Can’t really work from home in anesthesiology. However, if I need to sign a few things, they’re all running on Citrix images on the hospital’s computers. So whether I use my badge NFC to log into a WYSE thin client, or do it from home, it isn’t any faster. A Chromebook would be more than fast enough, just a pain to carry around. I wouldn’t try to compile a fresh Linux on one, but a Pentium II with a decent network

    • So...just curious: Whose using a Chromebook for Remote Work? Honestly?

      I probably could ... virtually all my tools are web based. I'd at least consider it, once my Windows laptop dies.

      And I'm a programmer. People who work with docs and presentations and such all day? Why not?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mckwant ( 65143 )

        This. ... and we sorta need to reframe "Chromebook". $430 gets you a 14" HD touchscreen 10th gen i3. 4G of RAM is presumably fixable, but fine, and what's on local storage, save the OS?

        Am I compiling all day? No. Remote Desktop? SSH client? VPN to corporate network resources? Absolutely.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by trawg ( 308495 )

      So...just curious: Whose using a Chromebook for Remote Work? Honestly?

      We've started buying them for some of our team members that aren't in technical roles to replace our Dell Inspirons. They love them - lighter, better battery life, simpler. They are reasonably nice to centrally manage too.

  • Now HP can get their asses in gear and get out the orders people placed seven months ago. All those chips which would have gone to Chromebooks can now be used in real machines.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ksw_92 ( 5249207 )

      Somehow I doubt that there are many, or any, new Chromebooks with Intel i5/i7/i9 CPUs in them. So, no, that's not going to help HP's supply chain pain.

    • 95% of Chromebooks sold are celerons and pentum silver with some arm and core series mixed in. so i dont think there hurting you i9 order.

  • Nobody here in Europe has even heard of them.
    And why would you buy an entire computer, to limit it only to a browser? (With a weird UI, but still, only a browser.) That's retarded! ... Oh, wait! That explains it!

    • I don't know who else is buying them, but Chromebooks are very common in schools here in USA. They're a great fit for schools since they're cheap and don't need an IT staff to maintain them. Kids have been using them in the classroom for years (starting at elementary level), and taking them home for homework, and last year also for remote school.

      At school they are using Google classroom, which has it's own video conferencing etc, and the kids use Google drive to transfer files from their phones to the Chrom

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