iPod positions Apple Mac to increase share of college market

“Since the earliest days of the brand, Apple computers have been a fixture on many college campuses. However, for the better part of two decades, the success of Apple in reaching educators and the reputation for usability it gained with students didn’t translate into market share gains,” Keith Regan reports for MacNewsWorld. “Yet, Apple continues to forge ahead with a marketing strategy that includes finding new footholds in the collegiate universe. Analysts say the practice is a sound one, giving Apple a large share of the sizable education marketplace, which is sometimes less subject to sharp fluctuations than the business and consumer markets.”

Regan reports, “In fact, if anything, Apple’s presence on the college campuses of the U.S. has grown manifold in recent years. While it has always has a strong presence in the computer labs of universities, the arrival of the iPod has made Apple hardware a nearly ubiquitous presence on campuses from coast to coast. Needham & Co. analyst Charles Wolf is among the analysts who believe there is more interest in other Apple products because of the iPod — the so-called Halo effect — and that it might be strongest on campuses, where the close proximity of students can help accelerate the pace of word-of-mouth and viral marketing that has driven so much of the iPod’s success. ‘My sense is that the success that Apple has had with digital music in general and the iPod in particular are influencing other purchasing decisions,’ he said.”

Regan reports, “IDC analyst Roger Kay, meanwhile, said that what kept Apple’s strength on campuses from spreading to market share gains in the 1990s was the lack of compatibility of Apple computers with the dominant Windows-driven PC platform. That’s changed, he noted, with more programs running on multiple platforms and popular software suites such as Microsoft Office now available for the Apple.”

Full article here.
Microsoft Office has always been available for Apple Macintosh. In fact, the first version of Excel was released for the Mac in 1985, two years before Excel for Windows made its 1987 debut and Microsoft released Word 1.0 for Mac in 1984 while the first version of Word for Windows was released in 1989. PowerPoint 1.0 was released in 1987 for the Apple Mac and in 1988 for Windows.*

*thanks to MDN reader Brian Allen for the PowerPoint reminder.

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23 Comments

  1. You get the feeling all these “journalists/reporters” do is read other people´s articles and then regurgitate it in another form for their venue? They never do any research of their own – other than read something that was in the NY Times or on the web somewhere.

  2. While true that the 3 core components of Office were Macintosh products first … let us not forget that interoperability between the Windows and Mac versions came with Office97 PC and 98 Mac.

    MW “anyone”, as in anyone in their right mind buys a Mac for college.

  3. Although, if you want to get snitty, Word for DOS was available before Word for Mac. Not that anybody noticed–WordStar and WordPerfect ruled the roost.

    Actually, I still remember Excel for DOS. When you launched it, it launched a “Windows Shell” which had just enough Windows to run Excel. I remember how the Lotus 1-2-3 guys used to laugh at how slow Excel was…

    Ah, those were the days…

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