Apple has dominated the classroom for more than three decades but Google has given it a run for its money when it entered the education market. Although both companies target the same types of consumers, Google's strategy seemed to work and toppled Apple from the top.
Both Google and Apple target the education market but use different strategies. Apple focuses more on selling their hardware along with a set of educational tools that teachers can utilize. Google, on the other hand, sells their hardware that promotes their software services.
Comparing the two, statistics show that Google's strategy proves to be more effective. According to Jan Dawson, chief analyst and CEO of tech firm Jackdaw, Google apps have become the "standard for classroom collaboration" and its email services are preferred by schools.
According to reports, Google has shipped 20 million Chromebooks to students around the world and a spokesperson for the company said that 15 million of these devices have been purchased by educational institutions around the world. The company also said that more than 60 million people in the education industry around the world are using their G Suite for Education.
Apple, on the other hand, does not release an exact figure saying they emphasize on the quality rather than the quantity. It, however, said that it has more than 170,000 educational apps and more than 1 billion of educational courses have been downloaded from iTunes.
IDC research director Linn Huang said that in 2015, there were around 10.9 million units of computing devices had been shipped to classrooms across the United States and 5.5 million of those were Chrome and Android devices. MacOS and iOS devices, on the other hand, shipped 2.9 million units.
Apple's biggest challenge in the education market is that it doesn't offer a low-cost PC. Google, on the other hand, still has to develop some of its hardware to fill the needs in the education industry. Apple has a more comprehensive and curriculum-centric products but Google has the platform which allows it to create some inroads.
