Apple seeks a bigger foothold in schools
One major hurdle: Its products are expensive
Google, Microsoft and Apple all want to be the teacher’s pet, and by extension make the grade with students, too.
Apple goes back to school Tuesday at a “special event” it is hosting at Lane Tech College Prep High School on Chicago’s north side. The company’s invitation referenced a “field trip,” where attendees will “hear creative new ideas for teachers and students.”
As customary before any of its events, Apple hasn’t said what it might announce. Education has long been a critical market for the company, and for rivals Google and Microsoft, as well. To varying degrees, each is playing a version of the long game: hook students early and in the hopes of earning a lifelong customer.
Executives at the companies say the societal good that comes with educating children is the top priority.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has touted the company’s Everyone Can Code initiative, for example, something we’re likely to hear more about in Chicago.
Google also sponsors programs aimed at helping students learn to code.
“Obviously there are some benefits for us in the form of some future users that may not have otherwise chosen Google,” says Bram Bout, director of Google for Education. “But those are in many ways secondary objectives to the big one, around really wanting to make education better.”
Microsoft vice president of education Eran Megiddo offers a similar perspective. “The important thing is starting with the mission of helping these kids learn and prepare for their future,” he says. The way to do that is through holistic approaches that include hardware, software and services for schools and educators, says Megiddo.
Microsoft has a range of Microsoft 365 educational offerings that include Windows 10 computers, Office software, Skype, the Microsoft Teams collaborative service, Minecraft and still-early efforts in so-called mixed reality, which is a blend of augmented reality and virtual reality. And Microsoft offers educators free “STEM” lesson and project activities to help teach science, technology, engineering and math curriculum.
Apple is well represented in colleges, yet it is nowhere near the top of the class in the younger grades.
Google has the top class rank instead, on the strength of inexpensive Chrome- books. Its cloud-based Chrome operating system at the core of these machines garnered a 59.6% market share in K-12 mobile computing U.S. shipments during the fourth quarter of 2017, according to Futuresource Consulting.
Notebooks and tablets that run Microsoft Windows come in next, with a
25.6% share.
Apple is third, with its iOS mobile operating system (for iPads and the iPhone) and MacOS laptops having
10.6% and 3.5%, market shares, respectively.
During the fourth quarter of 2017, shipments of mobile devices for the schools in the U.S. reached 2.08 million units, equating to just 1% growth, compared to the same period last year.
Despite the slowdown, both Google and Windows devices saw K-12 unit growth during the fourth quarter, while Apple’s iPad volumes declined yearover-year.
The sub-$300 price category saw the largest rise in K-12 share, helped not only by cheap Chromebooks, but lowcost education-focused Windows computers from Microsoft and its partners. Last year, Microsoft came out with a special streamlined version of Windows called Windows 10 S, kind of a cloudbased Chrome OS competitor. It could be used by anyone but was launched at Microsoft’s own education-focused media gathering and invited some confusion. You could only run “verified” apps from the Microsoft Store. Microsoft more recently announced a shift away from a dedicated Windows 10 version to a more flexible “S Mode” solution that will work on other flavors of the Windows 10 operating system.
Cheap tech gear is not in Apple’s DNA, even with speculation that Apple could introduce an iPad for as little as $259 on Tuesday, and possibly lower the prices on some Macs as well. Because Macs are so expensive, iPads have outsold them at schools by about three to one, Futuresource says. Up to now, though, the least expensive iPads lack keyboard or support for the Apple Pencil stylus accessory, limiting their appeal.
The challenge for Apple is in reconciling the company’s pedigree as a premium brand with trying to reach out to schools’ tight budgets, notes Futuresource senior analyst Ben Davis.
New hardware is only part of the equation. Patrick Moorhead, the president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, says Apple needs to first provide easy-to-use software and services that enable schools with limited or no technical staff at all to manage learning and classroom activities.
“Apple needs to bring software that is very easy to run (in) the classroom and easy to use for students,” Moorhead says. He hopes Apple won’t limit any new educational services to the iPhone and iPad. “Very few schools will be willing to do a complete rip and replace of current services and devices,” he says.
Google has the top presence in K-12 schools, on the strength of its inexpensive Chromebooks. Microsoft is second, and Apple comes in third.