TAIPEI – Coming off a record year, global notebook shipments will grow another 8.6% year-over-year to 217 million units in 2021, TrendForce predicts. The increasing popularity of distance education has galvanized demand for Chromebooks, which contributed substantially to the growth of the overall market. Chromebooks accounted for 14.8% of global notebook shipments in 2020, a rate expected to rise to 18.5% in 2021.

Owing to the stay-at-home economy brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, not only did yearly notebook computer shipment surpass 200 million units for the first time, but the 22.5% year-over-year growth was also the highest on record, according to TrendForce.

However, compared with the second quarter of 2020, during which production lines resumed operations, and notebook demand saw an uptick, the current global market is plagued by the ever-intensifying pandemic, with various countries instating border control and lockdown measures.

Since 2020, various companies worldwide have announced the implementation of work-from-home measures, with certain companies adopting work-from-home until September. To meet the audiovisual demands of online meetings, as well as the personal and entertainment needs of end users, notebook brands have been making improvements to their business notebooks’ functionalities, including AI, camera modules, sound quality, background noise removal, and image qualities, says TrendForce. In particular, HP, Dell, and Lenovo are each releasing new midrange and high-end mixed-use business notebooks in response to the commercial opportunities generated by the aforementioned user demands. Demand for this product category is expected to peak in the first half of 2021 and raise overall notebook shipments during the period.

Although Chromebook shipments reached 29.6 million units in 2020, 74% year-over-year growth, current demand from most educational markets has yet to be met, says the firm. This, along with continued Chromebook adoption in Central America, South America, and the Asia-Pacific regions, resulted in peak Chromebook demand. At the moment, TrendForce projects yearly Chromebook shipments to exceed 40 million units in 2021, up 37% compared to 2020. Moreover, given Google’s aggressive product strategies, this projection may have even further room for growth.

Windows remains the dominant operating system in the notebook market. However, the rapid growth of Chromebooks in 2020 dropped Windows’ market share below 80% for the first time. Windows is unlikely to recover its lost market share in the short run, as its decline is expected to persist going forward. TrendForce expects the market shares of Windows, Chrome OS, and MacOS to each stabilize at about 70-75%, 15-20%, and below 10%, respectively.

With regard to notebook CPUs, AMD’s Zen+ microarchitecture-based CPUs saw a major uptick in notebook adoption in 2019, with about an 11.4% market share. This figure rose to 20.1% in 2020 after a period of product ramp-up. In particular, Ryzen 3000 series CPUs have been receiving excellent market feedback in the entry-level and midrange notebook segments, thereby convincing notebook brands to start equipping their Chromebooks with AMD CPUs, bringing about a further and considerable growth in AMD’s market share.

The Apple Silicon M1 processors, based on ARM architecture, officially released in November 2020, reached 0.8% market share for the year. Apple adopted ARM architecture primarily to optimize MacBook performances. Along with the release of Apple Silicon M1, Apple has also completed the integration between its hardware, software, and SaaS platforms. The company is expected to release 14" and 16" MacBook Pros, both of which will be equipped with Apple’s in-house CPUs after the second quarter of this year, raising Apple’s notebook market share to about 7%. The 7% and 20% market shares from Apple and AMD, respectively, mean Intel will be faced with increasing competitive pressure in the market and need to deliver an appropriate product strategy in response.

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