Chromebooks made up a record 11% of all notebooks sold by Western Europe’s largest distributors in July and August 2019, having benefitted from the seasonal third-quarter peak in education demand, according to the latest data published by CONTEXT, the IT market intelligence company. Share was up from 8% in the same period last year, following a +27% year-on-year growth in volumes.
Volume sales to commercial channels, which include resellers focusing on education, were up by +20% compared to last year. As a result, Chromebooks accounted for 14.3% of all notebooks sold to commercial resellers in early Q3 2019, up from 12.7% a year ago. There was even stronger growth in sales into consumer channels, but the increase here came from a much smaller base: unit sales to retail and consumer e-tail were up by +57% compared to last year, bringing the Chromebook share of consumer notebooks up to 6% from 3.5% in early Q3 2018.
So far this quarter, Acer has been the top vendor, followed by Lenovo, HP and ASUS. All these companies saw Chromebook growth during the period. The UK remained the largest Chrome market for distributors in early Q3 2019, followed by Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands.
“Chromebooks have seen growth for a number of quarters now but the segment continues to be characterised by strong seasonality: demand is high in the third quarter, driven by sales to education, and then sees another – but smaller – spike in the consumer-driven pre-Christmas season”, said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at CONTEXT. “Therefore, as we move into Q4 2019, Chromebook’s share of overall notebook sales is expected to fall from this quarter’s high and drop further in the new year.”