“Apple Inc. is preparing to introduce new low-cost iPads and education software next week in a bid to win back students and teachers from Google and Microsoft Corp.,” Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg. “In its first major product event of the year, Apple will return to its roots in the education market. The event on Tuesday at Lane Technical College Prep High School in Chicago will mark the first time Apple has held a product launch geared toward education since 2012 when it unveiled a tool for designing e-books for the iPad.”
“The world’s most-valuable technology company plans to show off a new version of its cheapest iPad that should appeal to the education market, said people familiar with the matter,” Gurman reports. “The company will also showcase new software for the classroom, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private plans.”
“Last year, the global educational technology market generated $17.7 billion in revenue, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan,” Gurman reports. “Apple accounted for 17 percent of mobile computing shipments to American students in kindergarten through high school, according to data from the third quarter published by Futuresource Consulting. Devices running Google’s operating systems on Chromebooks or Android tablets held 60 percent of the market, and Windows PCs had 22 percent.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in May 2016:
The cream-of-the-crop schools, like the cream-of-the-crop consumers and corporations, deploy Apple Macs and iPads, not cheapo plastic Chromebooks. Unfortunately, too many U.S. public schools, unionized in the worst possible way, are broken through and through.
As we wrote back in January 2016:
There is no easy answer for a company dedicated to quality to compete in a market that’s hellbent on shortsightedly wasting taxpayers’ money on cheap, shitty junk.
Make that “cheap, shitty, privacy-invading, unsafe junk.”
SEE ALSO:
Google’s Chromebooks are still spying on grade school students – April 21, 2017
Apple’s answer to cheap Chromebook test machines: The new $299 iPad, tailor-made for education – March 22, 2017
Apple is losing its grip on American classrooms to cheap Chromebooks – March 2, 2017
Apple CEO blasts teacher unions, says US schools are ‘unionized in the worst possible way’ – February 16, 2007