Chromebooks Overtake iPads In US Education Market

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Chromebooks Overtake iPads In US Education Market

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 2, 2014 @02:39AM from the consume-produce dept.

SmartAboutThings writes In Q3 2014, IDC notes that Google shipped 715,500 Chromebooks to U.S. schools while Apple shipped 702,000 iPads. Thus, Apple's iPad has lost its lead over Google's line of Chromebook laptops in the U.S. education market as Google shipped more devices to schools last quarter. While analysts say [registration required] that this advantage for Google's Chromebooks can be attributed to their low cost, the presence of a physical keyboard has also been seen as an important factor.

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simple by slashmydots · 2014-12-02 02:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

They're about half the price and they have a management back end that's friendly to IT departments. That's all there is to it. Unfortunately, they're cheap, featureless pieces of crap that break constantly due to horribly cheap parts because they're just awful pretend laptops but every school district I know of passes the hardware failure cost onto the kid who "broke" it even if they didn't break it. What a great system.
1. Re:simple by tlhIngan · 2014-12-02 04:42 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  What surprises me, given their popularity in education(and the fact that turning any old laptop design into a 'chromebook' involves little more than a firmware change), is that nobody seems to make a modestly ruggedized Chromebook.
  Among normal wintel laptops, the bottom of the range is dangerously cheap plastic crap that breaks if you look at it; but it's quite easy to buy various levels of ruggedness from 'adequate build quality' to 'actually designed with road warriors in mind' to 'yes, actually rated to an alphabet soup of drop, vibration, and other tests' to 'Toughbook' to 'Please Consult a General Dynamics Representative, and have your checkbook open'.
  Given what you pay for the really high end, the cost/benefit for student use tends to land somewhere on the toughish side of boring business laptop; but you can buy those easily enough. For some reason, nearly all Chromebooks are delicate little things, cheap and lightweight; but just not that tough.
  Ruggedization costs money. try speccing out that Toughbook sometime and you'll find it costs a heckuva lot of money for not a lot.
  Partly because they're niche devices that don't sell a lot, but also because the ruggedization means extra materials and assembly that costs more.
  And Chromebooks are designed for a very price-sensitive market - they can't cost more than $200 before approaching "regular laptop" price ranges. And in the end, they may be more fragile, but with the data in the cloud, they're also a lot more rugged because if the student drops or breaks it, they just log into a new one and all the data is there.
  There's also the cost factor - if it costs $50 more to ruggedize a Chromebook, then it means instead of buying 5 Chromebooks at $200 each, they buy 4 at $250 each. The 4 may be ruggedized, but if students are careful and they don't break one out of the 5, then it's cheaper to go non-ruggedized.
  The other big issue with laptops is theft - and Chromebooks just aren't the target people wantak
2. Re:simple by unrtst · 2014-12-02 08:00 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  There are certainly costs associated with ruggedizing things; but those ruggedization costs apply to any laptop(so if it's more expensive than a chromebook now the ruggedized version is going to be more expensive than the ruggedized chromebook);
  The ruggedizing is, essentially, a flat cost. As such, the price increase as viewed in relation to the cost of the original device would be much greater on a chromebook. Eg.
  $200 chromebook + $200 to ruggedize it = 2x's the base cost, or 100% more
  $900 laptop + $200 to ruggedize it = 1.22x's the base cost, or 22% more
  When you're getting a bunch of them, that significantly changes the number of them you can get.
  $20,000 = 100x $200 chromebooks ... or = 50 ruggedized $400 chromebooks
  $90,000 = 100x $900 laptops ... or = 82 ruggedized $1100 laptops
  This is the key point I think the others we making. You'll still get broken ruggedized ones, but fewer of them. How many need to break of the cheap model before it is worth getting the ruggedized ones? With chromebooks being so cheap, there would have to be a phenomenal number of broken ones before you'd break even.
  Car analogy... it'd be like getting full coverage insurance on a used 1986 honda civic that you own outright. It'd be cheaper to pay for a new one with cash than deal with the deductible + high rate when they total it!
Misleading by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-02 02:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

If you sell more product in one quarter, it doesn't mean you overtook your rival, it just means your rival has already sold millions of iPads and schools are saying "no thanks, we'll wait till we need a iPad upgrade".
Adminstration by flogger · 2014-12-02 03:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

Right out of the gate, Chromebooks are easier to administer at an "enterprise" level. Yes, the school district needs to "sell its soul to get the management console (domain control and device management.) Google has been helpful with support for any needs we have. Getting in touch with and help from apple for issues is near impossible.

Chromebooks come with some good tools for using existing infrastructure without too much of a learning curve. Getting teachers to open and use a spreadsheet on an ipad is a lot more tricky than opening the same file on a chromebook.

Bottom line, if you are dealing with more than 5 devices, chromebooks save a ton of time and energy.

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Re:Can parents opt out by bobbied · 2014-12-02 03:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

Can parents opt out their children of these big brother data gathering devices?
Sure, homeschool. It's legal in all 50 states, to varying degrees.

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Not surprised by edremy · 2014-12-02 03:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

This seems a no-brainer for me in a couple of ways. Chromebooks aren't any more fragile than normal laptops in my experience- yes, they are cheap but dropping a $1200 Macbook Air, a $500 iPad and a $200 Chromebook on a tile floor are all likely to do permanent damage. My two (very rough) kids haven't managed to kill my Acer 720 yet. Given the low price and the "All files are in the cloud, devices are totally interchangable" it's easy to deal with them, plus they have a working keybaord and a trackpad.
On the flip side, I'm really seeing a move towards Google Apps for my middle schooler. Virtually all his projects are done as part of a group, and they work from online documents. He doesn't need the high end features of Word or Excel: he needs a way to have multiple people work on something over two weeks. It's easy for the teacher as well- just send them the link and you're done, no papers to lose.

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Re:Tablet fad is finally over by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-12-02 03:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

The 'Chromebook' is certainly spawned from one of the various strains of 'network computer' fantasy(though not one of the X11/ICA/RDP/VNC school of fully 'thin' client ones); but (whether Google actually likes this, or is just running into the constraints of 'network computer' and enduring it) it has mutated into a bit of a hybrid:

Everything feels a bit ass-backwards if you are trying to do things locally (since local programs are all basically treated as a special case of webapps with particularly aggressive caching); but between the various local storage capabilities that have been tacked on(either HTML5 features or ChromeOS specific hacks for 'apps' to create icons and the like) and NaCL/PNaCL please-don't-call-them-plugins, you do effectively have a more or less full set of local OS capabilities, a bunch of APIs, and so on, they just all look like they were designed by web developers.

Again, I don't know if this is acceptance or pragmatic endurance on Google's part; but either way the trajectory of ChromeOS started by veering far into 'network computer' (Hey, let's rip out basically all parts of a linux distribution except the browser!); but has then tacked back, albeit by re-implementing everything inside the browser, rather than re-exposing the underlying OS.

They definitely still prefer to be networked; but, then again, what OS doesn't these days?
Chromebooks -- pieces of junk? by steveha · 2014-12-02 05:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

The Chromebooks aren't going to last more than a few months. Ever try any of these pieces of junk at BestBuy?
No, I haven't. But I did buy a Samsung Chromebook and I have been carrying it around and using it.
It seems no more fragile than my old Atom-based laptop, which is still in perfect working order.
They are equipped with dim TN LED-lit panels, low resolution, and the keyboards are the most uncomfortable things ever.
Huh, which model in particular are you thinking about? Because IMHO my Samsung Chromebook is kind of like a Mac laptop, only less expensive. Both use similar "chiclet" keyboards, both have multi-touch touchpads (and both *use* the multitouch gestures). The Chromebook costs less, weighs less, and has long battery life; and it is adequate for the things I usually want to do when I'm out and about.
The screen doesn't have a "wow" factor but neither am I suffering when I use it. The 1366x768 resolution is pretty common for a device that size.
You make it sound horrible, but so far I love the thing. It's far better than my old Atom-based laptop (which struggles even to play a YouTube video).
But I digress, I've always hated the "chiclet keyboard" that all the laptop vendors have switched to.
You can thank Apple for that one. They did it first and then everyone else followed.
It does allow for a thinner laptop but I wish there were more laptops still made that have more ergonomic keys.

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Re:Tablet fad is finally over by hairyfeet · 2014-12-02 05:17 · Score: 3, Interesting

Exactly its the netbook all over again. I still have my netbook and if they come out with some more sub $250 10-12 inchers? I'll be all over that shit because in certain roles they are fucking brilliant! Take myself as an example, still have my 2011 AMD netbook which I use all the time for service calls and its perfect...why? It fits in a briefcase with my tools under the seat and the jobs I do on service calls, checking networks, downloading files, checking wireless connections, all jobs a netbook does well. Same goes for class work for teens, a vacation laptop, plenty of rolls and thin light cheap netbook fit just fine.
With the cheap tablets I'm finding it has 2 roles, 1 is for folks that don't want a smartphone (be surprised how many of those are around) but still need some portable web capability, and 2 is a portable entertainment center for kids. Got a 7 hour car ride with a couple kids coming up? Hand 'em a tablet a piece with some shows and games loaded along with some headphones and they'll be quiet as churchmice all the way!

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Re:Tablet fad is finally over by ShanghaiBill · 2014-12-02 06:33 · Score: 3, Interesting

The schools are not moving from tablets to Chromebooks. What is actually happening is that they are buying tablets for young students (K, 1st, 2nd) and Chromebooks for older students.