Apple’s fighting to regain its position in America’s classrooms
APPLE’S next splashy product announcement won’t be from its new campus in Cupertino, California. It will be from a magnet high school on the north side of Chicago - a signal that Apple isn’t ready to let go of the education market it once dominated.
Apple has not said what products will be introduced at its event, but the announcement comes at a crucial time as many school’s are looking to renew or change their agreements with companies for classroom tech over the summer. The hope for tech companies is that having their technology in the classroom can turn students into their long-term customers.
Macs, and later iPads, were once synonymous with classroom tech. But over the past several years, Google and Microsoft have overtaken the company as leaders in new classroom tech. Google is now the undisputed king in classrooms, thanks to an aggressive push to give individual students low-cost laptops - deals it sweetened with free software, and cheap rates to help districts manage the thousands of new machines. About 60 per cent of new technology being shipped to classrooms was made by Google near the end of 2017, according to the analysis firm FutureSource. Microsoft has also seen a gain, shipping roughly 22 per cent of technology to schools. Apple, meanwhile, has been slipping - with iOS making up 12.3 per cent of new tech shipping to classrooms, and MacOS with just 4.7 percent.
Google’s lead will be hard to shake, given how well it has sold its systems to schools and how accustomed they’ve become to its products, said Mike Fisher, associate director at Futuresource Consulting. School districts also tend to use a mix of products, often starting out younger students with iPads but then moving to Chromebooks or cheaper Windows laptops as students age and require more computing power or a full keyboard.
While Apple hasn’t said what it will introduce next week, it is expected to offer lower-cost iPads. Fisher said he thinks Apple will also offer substantial revamp of its classroom software.
A low-cost laptop, which has also been rumoured, would be a tough sell for Apple - even if it slashed the price of a laptop significantly. Right now, Chromebooks and Windows PC’s aimed at schools cost about US$300 (RM1,170) per student. That’s about the same education pricing for an iPad. Apple makes what money it does from selling hardware and software as a package. — Washington Post.