Google vs Microsoft vs Apple
“Since the Apple IIe desktop computer found a home in California schools in the 80’s, ushering in the era of the classroom PC, Apple and Microsoft have vied for the attention of American students. With the introduction of the iPad in 2010, Apple had a tool poised to displace the PC as an education essential, and the app-based software to go along with it. Within a few years, the company was selling millions of the touch-screen devices to schools, eclipsing Microsoft, which was marketing its own devices and free Office software to students. In 2013, Apple devices accounted for 50% of shipments to U.S. classrooms, according to research firm Futuresource Consulting. Microsoft, despite its lead globally, came in second at 29%.” Reports FastCompany in their piece on how the tech giants are taking on classrooms in the States. It’s an entirely different picture today, newcomer to the hardware field, Google now dominates K–12 education in the United States, even in schools that began using Apple and Microsoft hardware.
“Just five years after Google introduced its bare-bones Chromebook laptop, which runs a software suite that includes Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts, and more, and retails for as low as $150 ( ZAR 2030.00), the search giant has topped both Apple and Microsoft in U.S. education sales. It shipped more than 5 million devices to U.S. buyers in 2015, roughly twice the total of each of its rivals. In the first quarter of 2016, the Chrome operating system’s share of shipments to U.S. classrooms hit 51%—a number that will continue to rise,” according to Futuresource.
The story goes that while Apple and Microsoft were waiting for formal multimillion-dollar contracts, enterprising teachers were maneuvering to put Chromebooks into students’ hands.
The worldwide market for educational hardware and software is currently estimates to sit at roughly $43 billion and is expected to double by 2020, even as the global PC market declines and tablet sales slow. “The significance extends beyond the classroom. If students develop familiarity with an operating system at an early age, or so the thinking goes, they will prefer it in their future professional lives.” This has been a welll documented strategy employed by Microsoft, which still leads education sales outside of the U.S.
“In a classic Google move, the company began infiltrating American schools not by selling products, but by giving something away for free. It started wooing teachers in 2006 with Google Apps for Education, a software suite that includes classroom-management tools, along with Gmail and Google Drive. By observing classes and incorporating teachers’ ideas into the products, Google won millions of converts to its education tools.”
“Google’s resource investment started paying off when the company introduced the Chromebook in 2011 and adopted an unorthodox early distribution strategy. Most education sales in the U.S. happen at the district level and involve months of needs assessment and negotiation before devices are, generally, shipped by the thousands. Google, impatient to gain traction, simply bundled 30 Chromebooks together with a charging cart and a printer and started pitching them to schools. While Apple and Microsoft were waiting for their multimillion-dollar contracts to come up for renewal, enterprising teachers were maneuvering to put the affordable, easy-to-share Chromebooks into students’ hands. ‘We found teachers who were able to secure budget and go and buy those for their classroom,’ says Rajen Sheth, director of product management for Android and Chrome in business and education. ‘[Chromebooks] were flying off the shelves.’
“That initial flurry of interest in the devices turned into an avalanche in 2014 as state-mandated achievement tests moved online. Forced to adapt, districts around the country upgraded their Wi-Fi and snapped up no-frills Chromebooks by the tens of thousands. Today, more than 60 million students worldwide use school-issued education accounts for Google’s standard productivity apps each month, from email to spreadsheets, while their teachers use Google Classroom to create class websites that serve as a central hub for assignments, notes, and more.”
American teachers and administrators are “increasingly interested in the kind of management tools that Google’s Chromebooks are uniquely suited to deliver: setting up student accounts, updating software, grading homework, and more. And with classroom Wi-Fi improving, schools can take advantage of free access to Google’s massive cloud servers, which store student data and sync updates to homework assignments. Plus, administrators can manage the Chromebook remotely—an enormous advantage for short-staffed district technology teams juggling thousands of student and teacher accounts.”
The Chromebook does have its detractors. Some educators say that browser-focused laptops fail to engage students in the same way as touch-screen devices, like iPads and Surface tablets. Students perceive the iPad as a personalized device that enables creativity. Apple executives similarly argue that iPads, with their cameras, gyroscopes, and rich library of apps, are uniquely suited to encourage the kind of creative problem solving that American schools seek to nurture. They can be used for just about any kind of hands-on lesson both inside and outside the classroom.
“In response, Apple has started rolling out its Classroom App, giving teachers the means to control all the devices in a classroom, and has introduced tools that make it easier for schools to generate and manage login IDs. Microsoft also now has a “Classroom” offering as part of its Office 365 Education suite, which provides teachers with a way to organize course materials and to communicate with students and includes the cloud-based collaborative software OneNote, a rival to Google Docs.
This new software may check the right boxes and Microsoft is well positioned to grow, especially since the launch of Minecraft: Education Edition, which teaches children computational thinking and other STEM building-block skills, however some say that their offering is too complex and in a lot of places that complexity can be overwhelming. Teachers just want tech that works.
Apple is seen as a premium product, “but it will be as a lighthouse, not necessarily as a real share leader.”
Timeline of Ed tech in the States
https://www.fastcompany.com/3062994/the-big-idea/how-apple-google-and-microsoft-are-taking-on-classrooms
https://www.fastcompany.com/3062958/how-google-is-schooling-apple-and-microsoft-in-the-battle-for-americas-classrooms
