Other companies that keep track of these shipments sometimes exclude tablets from their calculations.

Canalys said Lenovo shipped 23.5 million units, to be the top vendor, with Apple (22.1 million units), HP (18.6 million units), Dell (12.0 million units) and Samsung (9.9 million units) following in its wake.

Chromebooks were the best performing client PC in the quarter with the volume of shipments growing by 122% year-on-year. HP led the market, with 3.2 million units, followed by Lenovo with 1.8 million units. Dell, Acer, and ASUS made up the top five, with each posting strong growth and record Chromebook shipment volumes.

“Chromebooks emerged as the centerpiece of the education segment’s digital response to the COVID-19 pandemic”, said analyst Ishan Dutt. “Uncertainty in how school terms will proceed remains at the forefront of educators’ minds in the face of secondary lockdowns and protocols related to dealing with infections within a school’s population.

"As a result, institutions turned to Chromebooks to deliver a relatively budget-friendly and easy-to-manage contingency to ensure minimal disruption over the course of the school year.

"Further, Chromebooks have played an important part in satisfying consumers’ and SMBs’ needs to get their hands on a basic computing device. Although production and distribution ramped up, the huge surge in demand led to orders being unfulfilled, and Canalys expects high shipment volumes to continue into the start of 2021.”

The tablet market grew by 43% year-on-year with shipments of 44.3 million units. Apple led the way, followed by Samsung, Huawei, Amazon and Lenovo.

“Tablets have come back from the dead as they deliver the perfect balance of mobility and computing power at a wide range of price points during such a crucial time,” said analyst Victoria Li.

"The tablet market has been in free-fall since 2015, with the last two quarters being the only quarters of growth in the last five years.

“Tablets are a natural choice for first-time PC users who want something uncomplicated and affordable to work with. The natural extension of Android and iOS on tablets makes it easy for parents, students and educators who dabbled with extended remote learning for the first time in their lives and prefer the ease of installing apps that these platforms offer.

"Another contributing factor is the role these tablets play in the accelerated pace of digital transformation that big and small companies are undertaking.

"Connected tablets allow businesses to deploy endpoints at crucial stages in their customer and salesforce journeys, thereby helping these businesses ride the storm. Tablets will find themselves at the heart of every digital transformation going forward.”