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!"

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

[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.