Great stat. I might be underselling the achievement... I bet some of that growth is driven by the insane battery life, which we know people care a lot about. To be clear, I own and love 2 M1-based machines :-)
I stand by my overall comment, though: They are better Macs. Not a new category or a new product for Apple.
They are powerful ARM laptops. I'm considering getting one purely because of that + Asahi Linux. My Pinebook Pro just doesn't cut it as a main machine, and I'm sick of x86.
I stick to free software whenever possible, so I wouldn't seriously consider using macOS. I even run Guix System (one of the FSF-approved distros) on my current main machine (ThinkPad T440p).
I stand by my overall comment, though: They are better Macs. Not a new category or a new product for Apple.