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Chromebooks Are Outselling iPads In Schools
Nate the greatest (2261802) writes Apple thrilled investors earlier this week when they revealed that they had sold 13 million iPads to schools and claimed 85% of the educational tablet market, but that wasn't the whole story. It turns out that Apple has only sold 5 million iPads to schools since February 2013, or an average of less than a million tablets a quarter over 6 quarters. It turns out that instead of buying iPads, schools are buying Chromebooks. Google reported that a million Chromebooks were sold to schools last quarter, well over half of the 1.8 million units sold in the second quarter. With Android tablets getting better, Apple is losing market share in the consumer tablet market, and now it looks Apple is also losing the educational market to Google. Analysts are predicting that 5 million Chromebooks will be sold by the end of the year; how many of those will be sold to schools, do you think?
What are you gonna use for typing papers?
Just say'in.
They're both terminals to the cloud mainframe. People who don't learn history...
That's probably a good thing since students shouldn't be static consumers of information and tablets are really subpar for most kinds of content creation. Add in the fact that a Chromebook costs half as much as even an ipad mini and overall the schools are probably making the rational choice.
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It's hardly surprising that schools would prefer laptops with keyboards, since students are expected to do a lot of writing. Chromebooks make sense because they are cheap, virus-proof and don't run Windows games.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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I'll be darned. Cheapest product sells more units. I wonder who's making the most money?
The tablets other companies are making are actual tools that people can use for productivity or enjoyment. iPads are nothing more than expensive toys.
7 will be that's what i think
Analysts are predicting that 5 million Chromebooks will be sold by the end of the year; how many of those will be sold to schools, do you think?
As a parent in a school district, I'm pissed that our school district is buying every student a Chomebook*.
I would be even angrier if they had gone with the iPad.
These programs are a bloody sham--they're a waste of money and will not help the education of our next generation one bit. There is nothing that providing a laptop per child affords that can't be accomplished through classroom media presentation devices (computer & projector) and a good school computer lab. These devices will only be a distraction and huge expense for families and schools as millions of them are broken every year.
*Our district is requiring that families pay for half, so I guess they're only half buying them and being dillholes toward us. I would be in favor of a program that provides these devices to low income families (and the district can pay for the whole thing).
Google's basically giving them away for free or extremely subsidized and then tries to make money from them by snooping on the kids' email, while Apple actually tries to make a profit from them.
http://thenextweb.com/google/2...
From http://www.edweek.org/ew/artic...
The plaintiffs allege that Google has employed such practices since around 2010, when it began using a new technology, known as Content Onebox, that allows the company to intercept and scan emails before they reach their intended recipients, rather than after messages are delivered to users’ inboxes, regardless of whether ads are turned off.
Mr. Fread and Mr. Carrillo say that neither they nor any other users of Google Apps for Education consented to such practices. They are seeking financial damages amounting to $100 per day of each day of violation for every individual who sent or received an email message using Google Apps for Education during a two-year period beginning in May 2011.
While the allegations by the plaintiffs are explosive, it’s the sworn declarations of Google representatives in response to their claims that have truly raised the eyebrows of observers and privacy experts.
Contrary to the company’s earlier public statements, Google representatives acknowledged in a September motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ request for class certification that the company’s consumer-privacy policy applies to Apps for Education users. Thus, Google argues, it has students’ (and other Apps for Education users’) consent to scan and process their emails.
In November, Kyle C. Wong, a lawyer representing Google, also argued in a formal declaration submitted to the court in opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification that the company’s data-mining practices are widely known, and that the plaintiffs’ complaints that the scanning and processing of their emails was done secretly are thus invalid. Mr. Wong cited extensive media coverage about Google’s data mining of Gmail consumer users’ messages, as well as the disclosures made by numerous universities to their students about how Google Apps for Education functions.
This space for rent.
Probably Apple. But which one's more useful in the education setting? It certainly isn't the iPad or any other tablet.
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But it will run games using Java and WebGL.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
What's the purpose of writing "Google reported that a million Chromebooks were sold to schools last quarter, well over half of the 1.8 million units sold in the second quarter."? What's the purpose of writing the well over half? Just marketing fluff?
Although this information is interesting, unless someone does a survey or purchase poll it is difficult to infer why chrome is doing as well as it is. Since iPads are more expensive on average it would be difficult to control for price selection to determine any other user preference bias.
No one cares about the beta anymore as long as http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 works! If they take the nobeta link away then people will care!
And pizza is more popular than fajitas in Beijing. So what?
All the Chromebook is, is another cheap junk device like the Netbook's were! Have fun with them! Its a shame these schools are selling its students to Google like that!
1) The average since Feb 2013 number doesn't show cyclical quarter-to-quarter numbers which would allow us to determine an estimate for a like-quarter comparison between the Chromebooks and the iPad.
2) If the 'market' being analyzed covers both the iPad (a tablet) *and* the Chromebook (a laptop), it also certainly includes other laptops, such as MacBooks, which some school systems are buying for their students.
example: http://pvpost.com/2014/01/28/every-shawnee-mission-high-school-student-to-get-macbook-ipads-for-middle-school-and-elementary-starting-in-fall-24540
While fewer schools buy gear like that for every student, if you're going to complain that a statement is 'misleading' because it doesn't include a competitor (which is, strictly speaking in a different category of gear), it's poor form (and even more misleading) to neglect to expand that category *only* for one side of the equation.
3) The average since Feb 2013 is only very slightly less than 1 million / quarter. As of the end of Feb 2013, there have been months: 16 months (Feb 2013 was included in the previous numbers, and July 2014 hasn't finished yet). That's 5 1/3 quarters.
If last quarter is above average, then it's *very* likely that iPads are still selling more/faster than Chromebooks.
4) Comparing the quarterly averages (937,500 iPads vs. 900,000 Chromebooks) based on the numbers given in the article still shows the iPad in the lead, even if you ignore similarly bought Apple's laptops in the comparison. (They are unlikely to change the numbers by a lot, but in such a close 'race', even a small difference can impact who is 'leading'.)
USRobotics kept walking around and saying their modems were the #1 selling modem. This is analogous of what Apple is doing today.
However, while USR was the #1 brand, most modems sold overall had the Rockwell chipset, with most brands simply adding a plastic box and different color LEDs.
More recently, Apple claims that the iPhone is the #1 selling phone. However, phones that use Android sell the most, period.
I shouldn't be, but I'm always surprised how religious people get when their favorite electronics company is shown to be extremely misleading. I know a guy that I'd known for years who threatened to "unfriend" simply because I refuted his claim that the iPhone was the #1 phone.
So this iPad/Chromebook issue is just another chapter of misleading sales tactics. But if you look at what Apple actually says officially, they're very specific in the literature. Unfortunately, people will be blind to anything that might change their worldview... and any company would be nuts not to take advantage of that.
When instead critical thinking, reasoning, logic, and philosophy outsell let me know. Tech doesn't matter.
The big negative schools fail to realize is the value of a Chromebook. Just try and trade in a Chromebook, nobody will give you much of anything for them. They are worth nothing after only 2 years. Many schools already complain about failure rate, breakage and although the Chromebooks are cheap. Some districts are spending thousands to improve or install Wireless networking to handle all those Chromebooks. iPads are not much different, they have breakage and theft, but at least you will get some residual value when upgrading. Chromebooks are throw away devices. The smart private schools are requiring students purchase a Chromebook. I think if a district wants to use Chromebook. Don't expect them to last through multiple users. It won't happen. Most district openly brag about the low costs of Chromebooks. I agree, its tempting to find out you can buy more for less. But I think districts don't do their homework and risk even a lessor investment in a product that does not hold up or belong in a school environment.
As a school administrator, there is only one reason that we go with Chromebooks across the industry: they're cheap. We don't have to worry about any kind of replacement cost, as it's cheaper to just buy a new one than try and fix them at all.
Teachers, at least at the high school level, hate Chromebooks because they are grossly underpowered. They don't interface with any of the science hardware or digital media products that most high schools use (Photoshop, anyone?). Sure, there are workarounds, but teachers don't want to have kludge together workarounds, they want guaranteed, tried and true solutions.
Students look at Chromebooks as a joke. They are toys that they get for free on someone else's dime. They can get a iPad or low cost Windows PC, on their own, load Chrome on it, and have a Chromebook that does so much more. Even in a low-income, high-needs district such as mine, kids are laughing at Chromebooks.
They'll be good for awhile, but Chromebooks need to come a long way before they'll be taken seriously by schools who really want to invest in technology.
You mean giving overprices, locked down, fragile nickel-and-dime machines that you can't type on to children isn't a good idea? I never would have guessed.
every freaking year they try to raise the wheel tax in my county (which goes to schools) cause the teachers cant buy fucking paper towels and tissues
meanwhile every tween is totally ignoring what is going on in class with their state issued internet gadgets
sigh
chrome books are awesome....
untill last week, I has an acer C7, that I poped linux on, and it handled everything an more for cheap.
only reason I don't have it now - got too excised when my brothers team lost the football, and smashed the screen :)
took out the ram and drive - done - got a cheap second hand lappy with a windows 8 license for $320 - time to install linux again
The chromebooks/netbooks SUCK! They are trashed before a year is over. The iPad has some staying power. And with little kiddies trying to download and noodle with Windoze/Chrome does not a happy admin make.
Any overpriced product has limited life
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I can not imagine homework is very practical without keyboard or trackpad. Chromebooks are also easy to pass along to next kid or share without privacy issues, and if they break down, like things in kids' hands often do, replacement is exceptionally cheap. Tablets for web browsing, visual tasks like photo editing, and casual games, laptops for heavy duty typing and bigger screen/multi application workflows.
There is a simple reason for this - economics. Early adopters went with iPads as they were really the only choice at the time. Now that the rest of the schools are going to jump on the bandwagon there are other choices and price comes into play. You can buy twice as many chromebooks as you can iPads for the same money.
Of course, that is assuming that their is educational software on the chromebooks that fit the students needs.
Chromebooks work fine offline too. You do have to change a setting in Google Docs to enable offline use, and perhaps Gmail also suffers from this flaw, but it is trivially possible. It is not the default, which is frankly bizarre, but I bought mine to be a backup web development machine, so it's running debian in a chroot.
I'd love a $99 netbook. My current one is getting up in years, but it's great for tossing into a messenger bag; it fits the ultra-mobile lifestyle very well. $99 is cheap enough to be disposable; I am sure they would sell like hotcakes. I wasn't able to find any information about them on a cursory search, do you have a link that you could share?
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I installed crouton and it totally sucks!
1) you have to run in developer mode which means one accidental miss boot or wake up and you entire hard disk is erased.
2) you get no live updates from google for the chrome portion
3) crouton linux has all sorts of network adapter problems, like seeing it at all, on my machine.
4) the archiving system for saving your current state for a reinistall after you accidentally press the space bar when it tells you to at boot (and reformats the hard drive) is byzantine and only for very serious experts who think there time has no value (e.g. want to buy a cheap computer and then waste tonnes of their time learing the tricks.
5) printing is a total disaster, and at a minumum requires a real computer or a special printer.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Chromebook is perfect for the sort of people who don't understand the difference between a computer and the internet. The lack of ability to install anything you want (aka malware) with just a click is in this case a bonus.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
At least, this is what I saw first hand. The teacher ran a lab full of TEN-YEAR-OLD iMacs that were STILL in regular use, and what she really wanted was for the admins to simply fund REPLACING THE ONES THAT BROKE, with SLIGHTLY BETTER USED iMacs.
Her request was denied and her objections shot down, because some salesman from Google had convinced the department head that what students really needed were bottom-of-the-barrel cheap disposable crippleware netbooks that they could take home, because The Internet or whatever.
The teacher had a standing system with a school IT guy, where all the iMacs were rolled back to a known state every night, and the internet connectivity was heavily regulated. It worked fine - all she wanted was more powerful systems so they could use iMovie without things slowing down.
The Chromebooks will all be destroyed or wear out in a couple of years. Then the school will have to fork over another round of cash to Google due to vendor lock-in. There is no advantage here. You buy cheap hardware, you get cheap hardware. Same story as ever. Chromebooks are a "solution" in search of a problem.
So when the students graduate Google will already have complete digital control over them. That cant be good...
This trend doesn't surprise me at all. I have a chromebook I picked up earlier this year with the has well celeron in it. I used the developer mode and chrubuntu to turn it into a Linux machine. Eventually I realized I just was using the browser 99% of the time, so I reverted it back to chromeos ( which incidentally gets modestly better battery life than the xubuntu install I had, but I didn't invest the effort to do all the battery boosting tricks) I also bought a chromebox, and it is now running Linux mint and is my go to desktop machine when I am not doing something that needs the oophm of my i7 desktop and uses so little power that I just leave it on 24/7.
And what's so wrong about it?
So what if you get served ads from your emails? its not like they are forcing you or anyone to buy anything, you can install an adblock extension and be done with.
The amount of tools and solutions available from Google and the extensions to the Chrome browser and ecosystem are amazing, plus, when you consider that Android apps are close to being integrated to Chrome makes it even more versatile and gives it more future usefulness than any overpriced iDevices any day...
I can remember when students had real computers that allowed them to do things, not walled-garden devices that were controlled by corporations. You could run software locally, install any software you wanted, write programs, and just experiment. You could learn a lot. How times have changed. Now you get locked-down devices that let corporations dictate what programs you can run, and require Internet connections. Google even forces you to save documents on their servers. This is progress?
Wait, I'm nostalgic for the MS monopoly!?!
Chromebooks outselling Ipads ? What about Microsoft ?
Linux, the variant chrome uses, has come along way to do that.
Google has correctly guessed the market and has crafted a machine that does the job well enough cheap enough.
One still prefers large on board non volatile storage though, but that costs more.
What a bizarre story with some pretty wild speculation. You are trying to compare what you assume is a 5 quarter average to what Google claims to have sold to schools in the last quarter. You them claim Apple is losing the education market to Google. You do realize nothing at all in the brief article or anything you linked to supports that claim. The one thing we know for sure is that Apple has sold 13 million devices to schools since 2012 and Google has sold at least 1 million.