Steve Jobs leads Apple to 31% of the education market? Big deal! John Sculley had 60%!
Tim Cook announced earlier this month that Apple had surpassed Dell as the number one supplier of portables to US higher education for 2007. That’s all well and good, but even at number 1, estimates suggest Apple has only a 31% share of the education market. Compare that with the 60% the Apple II enjoyed, and the choice becomes clear. Apple should dump all these ultra thin portables, and bring back the Apple II… and perhaps even the extremely shiny John Sculley while they’re at it. Check out this historic snippet (1988) from The Computer Chronicles below. John practically oozes charisma!
Above: Did she say “the portable” IIc Plus?!?
Well, John’s oozing something, at any rate…
Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader Walter for the clip!
Err.. yes John did get 60% and almost put Apple out of business in the process.!
i am not quite sure of numbers…but 31% today is probably much more(in units and profits) than 60% then…..
the market has grown and 31% i a hit load of computers!
btw: 31% all of which are high margins ones…unlike dell’s and hp’s crapy low end ones!
Scully had the advantage of riding on the coattails of the Apple II, which ruled the education market in its time. Jobs is playing to catch up to what was lost over time to the PC.
Apple could have dominated the market overall had it not been for Sculley’s decision to pursue high margins. My SE/30 was over $3000 but with the edu discount, I picked it up for $1800. That’s a tad ridiculous.
I’m sure this is tongue-in-cheek, but let’s consider that Sculley took that 60% share and leveraged it all the way to about 15%. At the same time he was able to take Apple from about 4% of the US market to barely 1%. Besides, I’ll take Steve’s 30% education and 10% US market share over Sculley’s peak 60/4 split any day.
But note that Steve s fudging the numbers: 31% is the sales of PORTABLES, and includes college students, not just schools. I’d bet schools could be as low as single digits. Even acknowledging the present and future vale of the college sales (Apple really is kickin’ ass!), the trend is a lot more impressive than the actual numbers. When I was in school 4 years ago there were a few – maybe as high as a couple hundred – Macs in a population of about 5,000. Now they’re talking 40% at Ivy League schools.
And I’m a low-level fanboy.
Here’s an idea, why don’t we condemn students to a life of chronic neck pain by putting the monitor 2 feet about their heads!