Chrome OS has been growing over the past few years so it’s not shocking that it is growing even faster in 2020. The pandemic is an accelerant of tech trends. Then in Q2 2020 and the rest of the year, supply constraints were addressed and the rise in work from home and distance learning drove PC demand from businesses and consumers alike. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in China (the world’s largest supplier of PCs), PC supply took a hit, leading to the sharpest decline in years. The pandemic’s impactĪfter years of bad news, PC shipments saw growth in 2019, only to have the coronavirus pandemic cut the celebration short in Q1 2020.

It’s safe to say that Chromebooks from PC makers like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo now outsell Apple’s range of desktop Macs and laptop MacBooks. Three quarters in a row of Chrome OS above macOS makes a trend. Frankly, any business that provides a product or service over the internet should be setting aside resources to ensure the Chrome OS experience is comparable to Windows and macOS. It also signals to app and game developers that Chrome OS can no longer be ignored. This is a big win for Google and a warning for both Apple and Microsoft. (We also contacted Gartner but that firm does not include Chromebooks in its traditional PC market results.) But when we went looking to see how the pandemic may have impacted the PC market, IDC analyst Mike Shirer confirmed the findings to GeekWire.

The milestone is based on numbers provided by IDC, which doesn’t typically break out sales based on device operating system. Microsoft’s Windows still retained majority market share, but also took a big hit as both Chrome OS and macOS gained share.

Computers powered by Google’s Chrome OS have outsold Apple’s computers in individual quarters before, but 2020 was the first full year that Chrome OS took second place. New numbers show 2020 was the first year that Chromebooks outsold Macs, posting impressive market share gains at the expense of Windows.

Google-Dell Chromebook Enterprise devices.

Market share windows vs mac