Inflation, recession, and slow growth are short term issues hurting consumer and commercial notebook demand while other factors like currency fluctuation, high unemployment, and political issues will put more pressure on spending during the holiday season and early 2023. As a result, Notebook PCs continued to struggle this year as shipments declined -15% compared to last year. Looming global economic challenges will likely have an impact on manufacturing and logistic costs.

The commercial segment continued to perform better for most vendors compared to the pre-pandemic level as upgrades continued across businesses, while consumer volume continued to be challenging for all vendors except Apple. Apple had a great quarter for MacBook PCs shipments and revenue, as they managed to deliver backlog orders which were mainly upgrades, plus MacBooks with the new M2 chipset driving sales across several regions.

One of the constants throughout the pandemic was Chromebook demand as many K-12 schools in developed markets rapidly deployed mobile computing devices for their student populations. Learning management platforms remain and are expected to drive sustained demand over the long-term, but Chromebook demand is shadow of what it was a year ago. Compare the first nine months of 2022 to the same period last year, and you’ll see that Chromebook shipments have dropped nearly 16 million units at a -51% growth rate.

The full report from Strategy Analytics’ Connected Computing Devices (CCD) service, Preliminary Global Notebook PC Shipments and Market Share: Q3 2022 Results can be found here: https://www.strategyanalytics.com/access-services/devices/tablets-and-pcs/connected-computing-devices/market-data/report-detail/preliminary-global-notebook-pc-shipments-and-market-share-q3-2022-results