Demand for notebooks soared to record ranges in 2020, driven simply by the school-at-house and work-at-home requirements due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notebook sales rocketed past 200 million in per year, a record-breaking 22.5% year-over-year increase, in accordance with market place intelligence firm TrendForce.

Microsoft ought to be celebrating. But appear closely and you’ll look for a disturbing craze for the business: Chromebook product sales went sky-high this past year, with 30 million purchased nearly. That represents 74% year-over-year development and comprises 15% of notebook market talk about – eating into Microsoft’s talk about of the essential segment. TrendForce notes: “Because of the rapid development of Chromebooks in 2020, Windows’ [notebook] market talk about dropped below 80% for the very first time ever.”

The firm continues on to predict that Chromebook sales will continue steadily to grow quicker than Home windows notebooks, with Microsoft’s marketplace share dropping to perhaps 70%, and Chromebook’s rising to 20%. (The rest will head to Apple laptops.)

A year are in stake with Microsoft’s upcoming discharge of Windows 10X which means vast sums of dollars, a Chrome-like operating-system that Microsoft is betting is a Chromebook killer.

Can it do this really, or might it be just another in an extended type of failed Microsoft tries to create a lightweight edition of Windows for cellular devices?