As most schools worldwide have begun adopting online learning in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, demand for mobile computing devices from many countries' K-12 education sectors has been rising with Chromebooks currently seeing the highest shipments, according to Digitimes Research.
The Japan government has recently launched the GIGA School program for its education sector with the program expected to significantly boosting shipments of the program's designated 11.6-inch touchscreen Chromebooks in 2020.
As schools in North America, Japan and Europe were shut down to prevent the spreading of the coronavirus, most schools had distributed their procured notebooks to students for them to learn from home. Meanwhile, they also asked for emergency budget from governments to procure more notebooks in a bid to fulfill the insufficiency.
Such demand is expected to drive up mobile computing device shipments to the worldwide K-12 education sector in 2020 by 32.3% on year to reach 42.1 million units.
The US that is undermined significantly by the pandemic, and Japan that has rather limited online learning resources, are both treating Chromebooks as the key device for the one-student-with-one-machine projects for their K-12 education sectors. Such a strategy will allow shipments of Chrome OS-based computing device to surpass those of Windows-based one in the global education sector in 2020.
Japan's GIGA School program, which offers a subsidy for each machine that is nearly US$120 higher than the average quote of the US' procurement orders, and provides total volumes over seven million units, has attracted a large number of brands to participate at the bidding. Device specifications of a 11.6-inch touchscreen Chromebook recommended by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is currently the most popular choice in Japan's education procurement market.
In 2020, shipments of Chromebooks with 11.6-inch touchscreen functionality are expected to approach seven million units with Hewlett-Packard (HP) to have the highest shipments and Quanta Computer to obtain over 60% of related orders.