Apple's iPad is proving popular in educational markets as a supplementary slate to desktop computers, according to Piper Jaffray. Android tablets, not so much.
Numerous case
studies and anecdotal evidence tell the tale of Apple's iPad as a boon for
e-commerce and even in some select business markets. Law
firm Prosskauer Rose, for example, issued 500 iPad 2s to its attorneys, who
use them to send and receive email messages and share contracts with clients.
Now evidence
of the iPad's viability in the education market is beginning to emerge,
according to Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster. The analyst found that all 25
technology directors in U.S. school districts he polled were testing or
actually rolling out iPads for users in schools. Conversely, no
respondents indicated that they are testing or deploying Android tablets.
"While
this may be expected due to limited availability of Android tablets early in
the tablet cycle, we also see it as evidence of Apple's first mover
advantage," Munster wrote in an Oct. 31 research note. That first-mover
advantage helped Apple sell 32.4 million-plus iPads in less than two years.
"We also
see a trend in education (which is mirrored in the enterprise) that familiarity
with Apple devices among students (or employees) is causing a demand pull
within institutions to also provide Apple devices."
This makes
sense. Apple II and Macintosh computers were huge in schools before Microsoft
Windows desktops hijacked most of the markets in the 1990s.
The data
sample, however small, points to a couple of crucial points. The first is
Apple's absolute grand slam of an iPad tablet launch in April 2010, and then its
encore this past year with the iPad 2. The second is the wholesale branding
problem Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and its OEM partners had with slates based on the
Android Honeycomb platform.
Perhaps
emboldened by the success of Verizon's Droid Does marketing campaign for
Android smartphones, Verizon and Motorola seemed to assume that the Motorola
Xoom would take off like a rocket when it launched
this past year.
But Verizon
Wireless didn't put the same marketing muscle behind the Xoom as it did for the
Droid back in November 2009. Moreover, the price point was higher than the base
iPad, and Honeycomb bugs have curbed enthusiasm for the Xoom, which only shipped
100,000 units this past quarter.
The good news
is that those educators Munster surveyed said that they expected to have more
tablets per student than they currently have computers within the next five
years. The tablets will supplement computers in most cases as more personalized
learning machines.
That means the
tablet market may extend beyond its current "iPad Market" state to include
more Android tablets-be they flavored Honeycomb or "Ice Cream
Sandwich"-as well as future Research in Motion Blackberry tablets and
slates based on Microsoft Windows 8.
That's
assuming Android OEMs and other challenges can get their pricing, software and
marketing messages right.
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