PC market on the decline as Chromebook sales slide from their pandemic peak

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

According to reports from research firms, global shipments of PCs declined in the first quarter of 2022. The total number of PC shipments last quarter was 80.5 million, but the figure was lower by 7.7 percent compared to the first quarter of 2021.

The PC market would have risen by 3.3 percent if not for the decline in Chromebook shipments. The market that uses over 40 million Chromebooks for teachers and students is experiencing a slowdown, but no information about it was included in the report. HP, Dell, and Apple were the top selling PC brands.

Only Dell, Apple, and ASUS saw year-over-year growth. The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros come with the company's in-house M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. The new Mac Studio desktop system came to market in March, bolstering Apple's desktop lineup at the end of last quarter and beyond.

In the midst of the Pandemic in 2020 and 2021, schools bought up Chromebooks to aid in the transition to remote learning, as demand for the device was high. In 2020, the PC market was up 11 percent, and over 30 million Chromebooks were sold. In the third quarter of the year a supply chain shortage caused sales to dip but they recovered in the final quarter.

Both firms agree that the market for PCs is beginning to level off after two years of surge in shipments. Due to the war in Ukraine, many companies stopped shipping their hardware to the country, which contributed to the lack of growth in the last quarter.

The focus shouldn't be on the year-over-year decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected, according to the group vice president atIDC.