Thinking About Apple’s Education Play (Premium)

Yesterday, Apple revealed its belated response to Chromebook’s domination in education. But once you get past the marketing whitewash, it’s not clear why any credible K-12 institution would take up Apple on its new efforts.

Apple faces the same problem in education that Microsoft does, especially in the United States, where Chromebook now accounts for more shipments to this market than all of their offerings combined. And it’s simply stated: Losing the education market is tantamount to losing the future because students entering the workforce will expect—will demand—that they be able to use the technologies with which they are familiar.

Some have expressed doubt to me about this concept. But I’ll just point out the obvious: Every major trend is IT over the past 20 years was driven by user demands, not by IT needs or wants. The consumerization of IT, the push to mobile and the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) phenomenon, and user-managed solutions like SharePoint have all come about because of user frustrations. This isn’t some future trend. It’s all happening right now, and it will continue to happen.

In the wake of several initiatives—Windows 10 S, full Office in the Microsoft Store, education features in Microsoft Edge, the Set Up My School PCs program, Intune for Education, Minecraft Education Edition, and Office/Microsoft 365 among others—over the past year, I graded Microsoft an “A+” for its education efforts back in January. The point wasn’t so much that Microsoft would win back share as a result of those efforts, but rather that the software giant was clearly taking the Chromebook threat seriously. And was doing everything it could to counter that threat as a result.

The army that Microsoft can go to war with here is straightforward and well-understood: It has excellent server and cloud services, great but complex client software, and a client platform—Windows—that has perhaps worn out its welcome. But it is at least a multipronged attack. And while some will correctly argue that Chrome retains an edge in some key areas that really matter in education—cost and simplicity, plus its growing recognition as an offering that just works—Microsoft, too, has its advantages.

But what about Apple?

It wasn’t that long ago that Apple’s primary contribution to education came in the form of Mac hardware, which it still discounts for students, teachers, and others in education. But Apple’s fortunes have shifted decidedly over the past decade. And these days, with iPhone responsible for about 70 percent of its revenues and iOS overall combined with services responsible for about 95 percent, Apple’s focus is quite different. And that is clearly impacting its education strategy.

For a brief moment in the early 2010’s, it appeared that the iPad would be a huge success in education. And that this success could lead to the fulfillment of Steve Job’s post-PC vision. But that success was short-lived: There are very few successful iPad deployments in education today. And many of the schools that did deploy were involved in high-profile controversies over the price/functionality of these devices. Some were even issued refunds. The iPad, to date, has been a disaster for Apple in education.

So it is curious to me that this firm—which, yes, is often comically tone-deaf when it comes to feedback it doesn’t want to hear—is pushing an iPad-only strategy for education this year. That it is coming a full year after Microsoft’s education “aha” moment makes it all the more confusing. Where Microsoft comes bearing a massive army, Apple comes with an iPad. And an Apple Pencil. And a handful of services.

Given the poor performance of iPad in education today, it should be obvious to Apple that this market has by and large figured out that Apple’s fancy talk doesn’t amount to results in the real world. And that more of the same isn’t going to cut.

But Apple released a barely-new iPad with the same price as last year ($329 to start, or $299 for education) and only one new feature: Apple Pencil support. There’s no Smart Keyboard, which is probably a requirement for most educational purposes. But there are some new classroom services that mimic what Google and Microsoft offer. Probably poorly: Apple is about fluff, not substance.

What Apple didn’t deliver is an inexpensive (for Apple) Mac for students and teachers. Or truly impressive discounts for education across the board. These are two things Apple could do. And I can only surmise that the reason it didn’t do so is that it doesn’t see the education situation as an extinction moment.

It could be right. Apple loses share in every market until it is a minority player by unit sales (marketshare) or usage share. But it generally makes more profits and revenues in these same markets than the competitors that are allegedly beating it. I can’t speak to the worldwide market, but that is absolutely the case in the United States education market. Apple may be a distant third behind Google and Microsoft there. But it is making more money from education than either.

Tied to this is my notion of students entering the workforce and expecting to use familiar technology when they do so. This explains Microsoft’s massive counter-attack against Chromebook in education. But for Apple, it has always retained such a huge and profitable share of device sales, especially in Western Markets, that it may not feel the threat as deeply as Microsoft does. After all, 50 percent of smartphones in the U.S. are iPhones. Who cares how well the Mac—or even the iPad—does? Apple may lose the education market by share, but it can still be profitable and will still derive massive usage elsewhere.

This doesn’t explain Apple’s strategy or lack thereof. Indeed, this is me just trying to figure out why yesterday’s Apple education event was so tepid and uninteresting. Maybe that’s all it needed to be.