Google Chromebooks overtake Apple iPads in education sales for first time, report says
After years of holding a commanding lead in the U.S. education market, Apple's iPad was dethroned by Google's Chromebook over the third quarter of 2014, recent statistics show.
Citing fresh findings from market research firm IDC, the Financial Times reports Chromebook shipments reached 715,500 units in the quarter ending September, outpacing Apple's 702,000 iPads. Apple still leads educational tablet sales by a wide margin.
"Chromebooks are really gaining traction," said IDC analyst Rajani Singh. "The growth of Chromebook is a major concern for Apple's iPad."
According to IDC, Chromebooks now account for more than a quarter of America's lucrative education market, quite the achievement for a platform first launched in 2012. Aside Google's own high-end Chromebook Pixel offering, third-party manufacturers Samsung, HP, Dell and Acer take care of hardware, allowing for cost-effective machines starting at only $199, lower than even a last-generation iPad Air with educational discount.
Signs of a shift toward cheap, cloud-based Chromebooks were first reported in August when notable educational institutions voiced concern with iPad implementations. Among teachers' critiques of Apple's slate was its non-traditional form factor, specifically a lack of physical keyboard that made it more of a "fun" device than a productivity tool.
"As the average age of the student grows the need for a keyboard becomes very important," Singh said.
In June, the Los Angeles United School District, which previously sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into an iPad-powered curriculum, announced a shift away from Apple and towards devices running Microsoft Windows or Google's Chrome OS.
LAUSD teachers also cited the iPad's keyboard-less form factor as a hinderance to learning, as well as issues regarding content control and general device provisioning.
While Chromebooks trumped iPad in quarter three, Apple still holds the lead in education when counting OS X devices, IDC said.
Citing fresh findings from market research firm IDC, the Financial Times reports Chromebook shipments reached 715,500 units in the quarter ending September, outpacing Apple's 702,000 iPads. Apple still leads educational tablet sales by a wide margin.
"Chromebooks are really gaining traction," said IDC analyst Rajani Singh. "The growth of Chromebook is a major concern for Apple's iPad."
According to IDC, Chromebooks now account for more than a quarter of America's lucrative education market, quite the achievement for a platform first launched in 2012. Aside Google's own high-end Chromebook Pixel offering, third-party manufacturers Samsung, HP, Dell and Acer take care of hardware, allowing for cost-effective machines starting at only $199, lower than even a last-generation iPad Air with educational discount.
Signs of a shift toward cheap, cloud-based Chromebooks were first reported in August when notable educational institutions voiced concern with iPad implementations. Among teachers' critiques of Apple's slate was its non-traditional form factor, specifically a lack of physical keyboard that made it more of a "fun" device than a productivity tool.
"As the average age of the student grows the need for a keyboard becomes very important," Singh said.
In June, the Los Angeles United School District, which previously sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into an iPad-powered curriculum, announced a shift away from Apple and towards devices running Microsoft Windows or Google's Chrome OS.
LAUSD teachers also cited the iPad's keyboard-less form factor as a hinderance to learning, as well as issues regarding content control and general device provisioning.
While Chromebooks trumped iPad in quarter three, Apple still holds the lead in education when counting OS X devices, IDC said.
Comments
In short, Chromebooks fit their old, dated, failed teaching model and they like that because it doesn't require change. Whereas iPads would require, you know, [I]work.[/I]
$$$ is another reason. Yet another failed case of "good enough" thinking.
"old, dated, failed teaching model and they like that because it doesn't require change..."
Well that's where you are entirely wrong. I'm not sure when you went to school, but 10 years ago, the classroom experience was nothing like it is with these Chromebooks. It allows a level of independence, expression, collaboration and teacher guidance that just wasn't possible. You probably have no idea what the Chromebooks and Google for Education is capable off. I invite you to read articles of how they are actually being utilized in the classroom and why school IT departments love them and you will understand (some links below).
http://www.reading.org/reading-today/classroom/post/rty/2014/01/17/using-chromebooks-in-the-classroom
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/four-awesome-ways-use-chromebook-classroom/
I don't trust those market research firms. I believe that there are ulterior motives at play and they have an agenda.
I don't trust those market research firms. I believe that there are ulterior motives at play and they have an agenda.
Their motive is revenue. That's what they do: they sell their research.
Each firm claims that they have special insight (data, methodology, etc.) into a given market sector, better than what the competition has, which gives research customers an advantage.
It's not that different than any other business. The basic idea is the dollar you spend on them is a dollar that's not going to the competition.
That said, as far as I can tell, all of these third-party research firms have atrocious track records. Heck, even the research departments connected to brokerages have lousy accuracy scores.
At least with financial analysts, there's a system that tracks analyst accuracy (StarMine) in which analysts are rated one to five stars based on accuracy vis-a-vis their peers. Only ten percent of analysts receive the five-star rating and the vast majority of them have a much higher likelihood of earning the same 5-star rating in subsequent years.
What does that mean? Well, essentially, it says that only 5-10% of analysts are worth listening to, forget everyone else.
AppleInsider, like all Apple rumor sites, takes zero account of an analyst or research firm's historical accuracy. They will publish any sort of garbage in order to garner page views. IDG, Gartner, Munster, Huberty, Shaw Wu, whoever, it doesn't matter to AI. As a matter of fact, if an Apple rumor site quotes an analyst, you can almost guarantee that they are not a StarMine five-star rated analyst.
I find that hard to believe. Chrome books are just as crippled as net books.
If IDC reports it, it must be true... :~}
I find that hard to believe. Chrome books are just as crippled as net books.
As a tech that works in education, I beg to differ. We have a bunch of netbooks and are getting a ton of Chromebooks now in their place. The netbooks take forever to boot up and log in and lag horribly with even the most basic of tasks. Students get frustrated with them and starting ripping keys off of them and otherwise destroying them. Students can boot up, log into, and be accessing web content in less than a minute on Chromebook. It's snappy and it works well and we haven't had even near as many cases of vandalism with them. They just work and students love using them.
These are the same teachers who are contributing to the production of a generation of dunces. Pardon me if I don't take their opinions too seriously.
In short, Chromebooks fit their old, dated, failed teaching model and they like that because it doesn't require change. Whereas iPads would require, you know, work.
$$$ is another reason. Yet another failed case of "good enough" thinking.
Not sure what old, dated, and failed teaching model you are referring to. Most content these days is now web-based and by putting Chromebooks into the classroom, we're forcing teachers to stop using the old software that barely runs anymore and start using more current web-based apps. Since it all runs in a standard web browser, students can go home and access the same content on whatever computer they have at home.
And let's talk about iPads and requiring work. Unless you've managed several hundred iPads, you have no idea what a nightmare they are to manage. Need a few new apps installed on all 360 iPads across the district? That's a few days of work at best right there. Centralized management of the devices is severely limited and full of gotchas depending on how you decided to initially deploy them. Updates to iOS are not automatic and take a significant amount of time per device. Expecting a teacher to manage this on their own is not reasonable expect for the more tech savvy teachers. All of my techs dread when they get a work ticket for an iPad and my school district is not alone in our agony. Compare that to Chromebooks where I can manage the apps and settings from a web interface and deploy a change to thousands of devices in a matter of a few minutes. Operating system updates on Chromebooks are automatic and take very little time to install.
And yes, money is a significant reason for our choices. We have a limited budget and need to make the most with what we have. If you can afford an iPad (and perhaps a keyboard and/or case) for every student and the tech staff required to support all of them, great. For those districts where we need to share devices with multiple students, iPads are not a realistic solution. They are intended to be a single user device and Apple's deployment recommendations are all for single-user scenarios. How do you use an educational app that tracks progress with multiple students? With all but the most basic of models costing at least $500 (plus keyboard and/or protective case), the total cost quickly adds up. Contrast this with Chromebooks that cost about $250-300 (with a Google management license) and we can lower the student to device ratio and not have to worry about increasing the number of techs needed to support them. We're able to get more technology in the hands of students for less effort on our part.
It's not a case of good enough. It's a case of people who actually work in education and understand all of the challenges, looking at all of the available devices and picking one that really works well. I'm a huge Apple fan and I tried to make iPads work as a viable solution. However, after rolling out a test set of Chromebooks and seeing how well they worked compared to the iPads we have, it was a no brainer.
These things are an IT departments nightmare. They have to be updated every 6 months.
Do you think Chromebooks are even that good?
So, where exactly are these 715,000 shitbox pre-alpha equivalent's to Netbooks? I have yet to see a SINGLE BLOODY ONE in the wild ANYWHERE... A friend that works at a big box store refuses to sell them because at that location they have upwards of an 80% return rate! And her store is the middle of what one would call the cheap-ass-central district!
There, fixed that for you...
Where, in the ghetto school districts of the likes of L.A. and Detroit where they can't afford jack shit because they squander their IT budgets on BS endeavours?
Great, so instead of providing a device which students have fun using, thus making it a more engaging learning experience, let's give them a POS that they will HATE and will have no desire to use at all, and thus will not focus on their studies because of the depression induced by these pieces of crap, SMFH
The keyboard is becoming less and less important, get with the times Mr. Singh, this isn't the 80's anymore. I see teenagers just FLY on their iPad's WITHOUT a physical keyboard!
ROTFL! This was the ultimate blunder of a bunch of idiot bureaucrats over in the LAUSD... They signed into a contract to deploy a device / platform they obviously knew nothing about, and then were stumped by it because the students were able to out-smart their dumb-as-shit IT staff by hacking their MDM implementation on the devices and begin doing stuff they weren't supposed to.
This has got to be the biggest pile of steaming hot horseshit I've read in a while from IDC, and it seriously makes me want to hurl chunks... For some reason I cannot fathom, they ALWAYS seem to put anything Google in the forefront as the winner, and when the numbers don't support their theories, out comes the old "shipped" metric with a bunch of made up "estimates", what a joke!
I was trying to be moderately nice
I really wonder if these Chromebooks keep your information private.
If I had a child in a school that used Chromebooks I'd demand assurance that no data or information about what my child does ever goes to Google or anyone outside the school. If my child uses a Google Drive account or gets assigned a Gmail account, I want that account to be locked down tight so that nothing or nobody at Google ever has access to information contained in them.
A Chromebook without the ability to mine data is 100% USELESS to Google. They don't exist to make Google money through the sales of hardware or services - they exist to give Google another source of information.
I'd be very interested to see what policies schools have in place for users of Chromebooks (if they even thought about it).
I really wonder if these Chromebooks keep your information private.
If I had a child in a school that used Chromebooks I'd demand assurance that no data or information about what my child does ever goes to Google or anyone outside the school. If my child uses a Google Drive account or gets assigned a Gmail account, I want that account to be locked down tight so that nothing or nobody at Google ever has access to information contained in them.
A Chromebook without the ability to mine data is 100% USELESS to Google. They don't exist to make Google money through the sales of hardware or services - they exist to give Google another source of information.
I'd be very interested to see what policies schools have in place for users of Chromebooks (if they even thought about it).
A chromebook without a data connection is absolutely useless, it's OS is webkit based.
For clarification, IDC is a well-known marketing research company that simply publishes corporate press releases from their clients. Publishing client press releases as market research is the primary revenue source for IDC.