“In the beginning, there was Apple. ‘At one point, the Mac was the hot box on campus, for those of us who have gray hair,’ said Kenneth C. Green, founding director of the Campus Computing Project, which studies the role of technology in higher education,” Elizabeth Redden reports for Inside Higher Ed.
“Apple’s chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, announced last week that the company is emerging from its best back-to-school quarter ever for its higher education division, with shipments of Mac portables increasing 49 percent from last year within the sector, the increase driven, Oppenheimer said, by sale of the MacBook and Apple’s successful back-to-school promotions,” Redden reports.
Redden reports, “While Dell continues to grow and remains the overwhelming powerhouse on college campuses, Apple, which rapidly lost its market share on campuses in the 1990s, is now quickly expanding its presence at colleges and universities, according to experts who track both student purchasing and institutional trends. The rise of iTunes and the iPod, Apple’s marketing coup of positioning itself as an especially hip brand, and an overall increase in laptop purchases, a sector in which Apple proves particularly strong among college-aged buyers, all contribute to the trend, said Eric Weil, managing partner of Student Monitor, a national group that tracks college students’ consumer habits.”
“A spring 2006 Student Monitor survey of 1,200 full-time four-year undergraduates at 100 campuses found Apple squarely situated as the No. 2 preference among the 19 percent of college students — equivalent to 1.1 million people nationwide — planning to purchase a computer within the next year. Among those students planning to buy a desktop, 41 percent said they planned to buy Dell and 13 percent Apple, with other companies, including Gateway, HP and eMachines, close behind Apple, with 9, 7 and 6 percent of the pie respectively,” Redden reports.
“Among those buying notebooks — which 68 percent of students who said they would buy a computer within the next year planned to purchase — Dell is still the leader, with 40 percent planning to buy Dell laptops. But Apple, with a 21 percent share, has no close competitor for second-place: HP and Sony Vaio, the next-largest players in the market, have just 6 percent of the share each,” Redden reports.
Full article here.
Related articles:
Nearly half of computers purchased at Harvard this year were Apple Macs – October 27, 2006
Analyst: Apple Mac gains market share, the reason why is significant – October 26, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac attained 5.8% of U.S. market share in Q3 06 – October 18, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 6.1% of U.S. market share in Q3 06 – October 18, 2006
Apple Q4 earnings results: $546M net profit on $4.84B revenue, sold 1.61M Macs, 8.729M iPods – October 18, 2006
45-percent of computers purchased at Princeton this year were Apple Macs – October 12, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 4.6% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac attained 4.8% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
