Shane Cole
Cupertino may own 94 percent of the education tablet market, but 3 out of 4 American elementary schools are still without the slates, according to a recent survey.
During Apple's fourth quarter earnings call earlier this week, Chief Executive Tim Cook called the iPad's education market share "unheard of" and said he had "never seen a market share that high before" — Â but there is plenty of headroom for even more expansion, says the developer of popular iOS education app PocketPhonics.
The survey of 374 parents and 160 teachers throughout the U.S. found near-unanimous agreement among teachers that tablets would soon make their way into the balance of elementary schools and preschools that do not currently employ the technology, with 83 percent of parents saying they would support the move.
Even more damning for the future of non-iPad tablets in education may be the lack of availability of educational content. In addition to Apple's iBooks Textbooks initiative, the developer notes that only one of the ten most popular educational apps cited by parents in the survey were available for Google's Android, the other major tablet operating system.
"The fact that the iPad is so strong in education makes it difficult to justify developing for any other platform," said John Friend, managing director of PocketPhonics developer Apps in My Pocket.
"I would love to find new markets for the PocketPhonics app. But with such a small slice of the education pie, the Android market is currently too small to support the costs of developing an app," he continued.
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Charles Martin
Mike Wuerthele
17 Comments
Apple stock tanks because they are dominating in a growth industry¡
selling to kids and the 1st hit isn't even free...
NYT headline: Apple not cool amongst school kids. 75% elementary schools prefer no tablets to iPad.
I have been marking first year university calc homework assignments this semester and its shocking. Most kids have handwriting that is awful; they have tremendous problems drawing a 2 inch straight line; and organize their information in such a poor manor. For anything that requires some skill, like drawing a graph, a partial symbol, a greek letter, you get a some sort of jackson pollock hieroglyphics ridiculousness.
So yeah, get every child an iPad and then in a few years we'll have a society who can't use pens/pencils, but they'll be sick at candy crush and expect a youtube video for the simplest concept.
I have been marking first year university calc homework assignments this semester and its shocking. Most kids have handwriting that is awful; they have tremendous problems drawing a 2 inch straight line; and organize their information in such a poor manor. For anything that requires some skill, like drawing a graph, a partial symbol, a greek letter, you get a some sort of jackson pollock hieroglyphics ridiculousness.
So yeah, get every child an iPad and then in a few years we'll have a society who can't use pens/pencils, but they'll be sick at candy crush and expect a youtube video for the simplest concept.
I agree with you. The sad part is that it's more evolution and folks like us missing the "old days". It makes me cringe when I see teens and some young adults that can't write legibly, tend to write as if they are "texting" using abbreviations and such. Handwriting is going to be a lost art, and in the end... "old" folks like us will reminisce about it while telling the neighbors to stay the hell off our lawn. :/