“Google is cutting back on production hardware.

Google notices the impact of a shrinking hardware market. The company has indicated to dozens of employees working on laptops and tablets that they should look for another job within the company. Perhaps it’s a sign that Google is putting its focus somewhere else.

Various media have interpreted this news as a sign that Google is reducing its hardware division. The employees who have been told to look for a vacancy within Google are part of the Create-team. It works on the Pixelbook and other Pixel devices, among other things. This mainly concerns hardware engineers, technical program managers and employees who support the program managers.

Reducing production

Various reports show that Google has cancelled a number of its projects within the laptop and tablet divisions. This is partly due to the fact that fewer people work in the departments, which means that less is possible with the company’s various hardware projects. It seems that most of the employees are transferred to the department that works on the Pixel smartphone.

At the same time, Google would have advised employees to look for temporary roles. This in turn indicates that Google may eventually choose to restart its hardware division. Of course Google didn’t want to respond to the messages.

Shrinking market?

While sales of laptops have fallen sharply since 2011, the market has slowly recovered over the past three years. 156 million were sold in 2016, 162 million last year and 165 million laptops are expected to be sold again in 2022. Google will therefore want to invest more resources in this area. At the same time there are the sales of tablets, which are very much in decline. In 2014, 133 million were sold, but last year only 94 million were sold. It is expected that in 2022 only 84 million tablets will be sold.