Chromebooks have proven to be terrific machines for students — or really, just about anyone working from home these days. Chromebooks have seen tremendous sales over the past year, with whopping 275% year-on-year growth in the first quarter of 2021. While growth has now slowed, Chromebook sales continue to do strongly in Q2 2021.

Q2 2021 global market growth in the PC market.  

The latest analytical data compiled by marketing firm Canalys proves that Chromebook shipment volumes continue to outpace the rest of the industry's product categories — totalling 11.8 million devices sold in a single quarter (74.7% year-over-year). Despite a slowdown in growth, Google's platform saw a 75% annual increase and a shipment volume of 11.9 million units. Major vendors have been doubling down on their investment in Chromebooks, and that effort has paid off — they've consistently seen strong returns thanks to the platform's wide adoption globally.

Worldwide Chromebook shipments.

HP continues to have a commanding lead in the Chromebook market with 4.32 million devices sold and 115.7% annual growth — maintaining the wild 36.4% market share it had in Q1 2021. Lenovo takes second place, and while its shipment has declined since Q1, its 2.56 million Chromebooks is nothing to worry about, growing 81.5% annually. Acer managed to ship out more Chromebooks to customers than it did in Q1 — it sold 1.86 million devices and grew 83% since last year. Dell and Samsung fill out the top five, but in a surprising turn of events, Dell suffered a shipment decline of 8.7%. This isn't the end of the world for Dell, however, as its 1.11 million shipments is still quite impressive.

A separate research firm, IDC, reports 12.3 million Chromebooks shipped in Q2, or 68.6% year-over-year growth. While there's minor discrepancy between Canalys and IDC's report, both solidify the fact that Q2 of this year was another strong quarter for Chromebooks. Canalys research analyst Brian Lynch commented on the surge of Chromebook sales:

“The success of Chromebooks is proving to be remarkably resilient. Even as key markets like North America and Western Europe have seen schools begin to open up, shipments remain elevated as governments and education ecosystems plan for long-term integration of Chromebooks within digital learning processes. With Chrome’s hold over the education space relatively secure, Google is set to bet big on the commercial segment this year."

As Chromebook sales continue to expand globally, they have the potential to increase their market share significantly by emerging into new markets that previously weren't accessible before. With Google's recent efforts to make Chrome OS a lot more capable, I can only see more people moving to Chromebook for their daily needs.