Apple Surpasses Dell in EU Education Market

wackymacs writes "According to a report from Macworld UK, Apple has confirmed it has taken the number one spot in the Western European education market. The company's education market share in the region is now 15.2 percent, placing Dell, with 14.7 percent, to second place. Gartner analyst Isabelle Durand confirmed: 'During the fourth quarter 2005, Apple became the number one PC vendor in the Western European Education market. The company has continued to grow very strongly (+22.4 per cent) and achieved a 15.2 per cent of market share in Q4 2005.'"

Comments

Smart move for Apple

[alex_guy_CA]

If I were an OS maker thinking of the future, I would want as many school kids to work on my computers as possible. People stick with what they are used to, so if a kid works with Mac's in school, what are they going to get when they go to college, or when they buy a house. Has anyone seen any data on lifetime loyalty or stickiness for operating systems?

Re:Smart move for Apple

[tbone1]

Except that, at one time, Apple was THE option in US education. However, DOS/Windows became the staple of business, largely riding on the back of the "nobody ever got fired for going with IBM" mentality. People purchased a home computer based on this, and schools were convinced by the type of middle management fusspots that get on school boards that they should get kids on Windows ASAP. There were other factors involved, of course, but that was part of what led to Apple losing its dominance in education.

Of course, whenever someone makes that "Think of the children!" argument, I tend to smack my lips and say "Mmm, delicious!"

Re:Smart move for Apple

[vasqzr]

Except that, at one time, Apple was THE option in US education. However, DOS/Windows became the staple of business, largely riding on the back of the "nobody ever got fired for going with IBM" mentality.

DOS had all the business programs. Apple started with stuff like VisiCalc but never got much further than that. DOS had 1-2-3, Wordstar, dBase, Paradox, Wordperfect, etc. So they became king of the business world. And people bought home computers so they could work on stuff from work, at home.

Apple machines were great for schools. Not for learning about computers, but for LEARNING. In the 80's schools were full of Apple computers, Number Munchers, LOGO, Turtle Graphics, Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, Print Shop, typing games... It was about learning. Nobody was forcing computers down kids throats. Nobody decided on using PowerPoint for stupid things and grading kids on it.

Macintosh took quite a foothold in the college scene as well.

Of course apples are the best choice for schools..

[boldtbanan]

because students won't be able to play any games on them!

(And we all know how much teachers like apples to begin with)

No wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Michael Dell wanted Steve Jobs to haave Apple fold their tents and give the money back to their shareholders.

Good call......

dumbass.

Common misconception

[this great guy]

There is also this common misconception that, on the global desktop & server PC market, Apple is extremely small compared to Dell. People think that Apple sells 1% or less of the total number of PCs sold by Dell. But this is wrong, Apple has got 1/7th (14%) of Dell market share. Given this perspective, Apple suddenly appears much bigger...

Perception

[Tom]

There is still hope that a new generation will grow up and not accept that computers crash all the time, data gets lost every now and then and for that really important word document, there can't be enough backups because you never know when the machine will just eat it.

Also, they might have much higher expectations for a GUI and point out all the bad stuff about the windos standard we who've grown up with it don't even notice anymore.
When my mother got her first PC, I put Linux on it. For surfing and mail it was perfect. Later on she took one of those "internet course" things. She came back with a strong dislike of "that windows thing" she had to use there. I'm certain anyone whose first exposure to computers was a Mac will have a much stronger opinion.

Re:Macs on Campus

[hattig]

Still, Apple has come a long way since 10 years ago.

I remember the Macs at school then. They really did suck. A lot. Looked nicer than the PCs though, but the OS and the keyboard and the mouse did suck.

Since then, the OS has overtaken Windows substantially, Windows gets reamed by viruses and spyware too easily, and Apple's hardware still looks nicer. 'Macs suck' is just a silly teenage opinion now, rather than being based upon any real fact. Still, the UK Macs still have the @ and " swapped from the usual Windows arrangement, and don't have a # on the keyboard! God knows why! They have that funny S thing, it has its own key!

However people use what they're used to, they're scared to change, they're sheep. It doesn't have the comforting blue E of vulnerability, I mean, Internet on it.

Got an iBook G4 here :)

[Per Wigren]

I just started studying at N3P in Stockholm/Sweden, which is a ~2 year (90 weeks) full time education in "Open Source entrepreneurship". It includes everything from project management to starting your own company to "IT" and basic system administration. Everything has a focus on Open Source, primary on the server side but also on the desktop application side. We have courses on Open Source licenses, software, philosophy etc. "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is in the list of course material...

Basically they thought that there are too many smart people out there with great ideas and lots of self-learnt knowledge but who are stuck in the system. "Let's make nerds into company owners."

I really like this education. Rule #1 is "Don't follow the rules." :) A big part of the education is to think outside the box, avoid bureaucracy, turn crazy ideas into reality and revolutionize the world. :)

Anyway, sorry for the rant. To get to the point: When we started, everyone got an iBook to use for the course. They chose to go with Mac because it has really low support costs for them ("it just works"), and it's based on UNIX so we can run and test most Open Source applications locally without hassle (through Fink or DarwinPorts). They explicitly state that we are free to format it and install Linux or BSD though, no courses rely on Mac-specific software.

Oh, and .doc is a banned file format. :)

Something doesn't jibe.

[MisterSquid]

If anything, putting their computers in an environment like a school to show young people that Macs *do indeed actually crash quite a bit, even under OS X* is a bad idea.

I own 4 macs: a 15" Powerbook, a 12" iBook, a dual 2.5 GHz G5, and a 1 GHz G4 (MDD). These 4 machines are up and running 24/7. Two of them are servers exposed to the Internet. One of those servers also runs Final Cut Pro, email, etc.

I can count on one hand how many times these machines have crashed since 2002 (three times). Applications do occasionally lock up but can always be force quit.

If your macs are running OS X and the hardware is not faulty, your Macs are not going to be crashing. Since 50% Mac share at your school suggests more than a few Macs, my intuition is that you're making this up or that the users at your school don't know what a crashing Mac looks like. In other words, I think either you're lying or you have no idea what you are talking about.

Do you have any details about these crashes?

Re:Macs on Campus

[RedBear]

Uh-huh, yeah. I just have two things to say to that.

1. Before Mac OS X version 10.2, I would have agreed, Macs certainly did suck. Especially Mac OS 9 and earlier. It really sucked bigtime. I hated Macs back then.

2. If all those G5 iMacs are operating worse than the PCs on a regular basis, they need to get someone in there to maintain them who has half a clue. Those Macs should be rock solid. I speak from experience with a couple dozen different types of Macs running Mac OS X 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4. We're talking anything from G5 towers to gumdrop iMacs from 6 years ago. And proper maintenance is not rocket science either.

You're either full of it or the techs in charge of that campus are morons. Not to mention that anyone with a little training can set up a Mac server and netboot every Mac in the building whereby it's possible to make them basically foolproof and impossible to mess up. You can make them boot from a fresh disk image every time. Great for school environments. But hey, if you hate them that much I know several million people who would be happy to take them off your hands, cheap.

If you've got a specific piece of software that keeps crashing, here's an idea: Stop blaming it on the Mac and replace it with a different piece of software that doesn't crash. It doesn't matter how stable your OS is, if your application is crap it will still crash.