Windows in Education: What Wasn’t Said (Premium)

As you may have read, Microsoft is again touting gains in the education market. But there are a few tidbits that the firm left out. And yes, they are the most important data points.

The education market is obviously very important to Microsoft: This market, by nature, represents the future. The future generations of people who will both use technology and determine which products their companies deploy and manage.

Historically, the education market has been split between Windows PCs and Macs, with the exact percentages of each varying by locale and over time. But with the broader personal computing market evolving thanks to the web and mobile, education, suddenly, is in play. And a new competitor, Chromebook, has risen out of literally nowhere to assume a dominant role today in the United States and, increasingly, other markets as well.

So Microsoft is fighting back. And as is so often the case, it is literally doing everything it can, in this case to wrestle back control of the education market before Chromebook can take over the world. After all, a generation of kids educated on Chromebooks and Google services will expect---will demand---that technology when they enter the workforce. Employers will start seeking out those with Google Sheets skills, not Excel skills.

I am not here to denigrate Microsoft's efforts here. As noted, the software giant is making a major push. It started with last year's education event, at which it also introduced the Surface Laptop and Windows 10 S. And it continued throughout 2017, with Microsoft in December noting a bit of progress. Then, in January, it also announced new updates to Microsoft Education, including a new Chemistry update for Minecraft: Education Edition, new MR content for Windows Mixed Reality, and cheap new Windows 10 2-in-1 PCs.

I previously examined Microsoft's progress and determined that the company had cherry-picked some data from a Futuresource quarterly report to bolster its claims. The most important bit, I think, is that Microsoft's progress, such as it was, came from just a single quarter's worth of data. We need more information than that to determine if what Microsoft is doing is working.

Well, it's a quarter later. And Microsoft is again touting a Futuresource report and making claims of progress. Specifically, it calls out the following facts related to Windows in education:

More K-12 schools in the US are choosing affordable Windows devices. ("More" compared to what?)
Windows share grew an additional 6.5 points on devices under $300 – reaching its highest share in four years in this category. (This is a sub-category, albeit a big one, I bet.)
Every month, over one million new Windows 10 devices are being used by students in K-12 and higher education.

And that's about it.

So what I'd like to highlight here are some interesting items that Microsoft did not mention at all in its education update. And some other facts from the Futuresource re...