Apple Regains Lost Ground On Campus

After losing a considerable amount of market share among college students in the 1990s, Apple has lately seen sales of its computers on campus rise to the number two spot behind Dell. Although Dell still controls more than half of the higher education market, Apple has ridden a wave of support to pass IBM, Gateway, HP, and other makers.

Officials from Apple said that sales of portable Macs rose nearly 50 percent during this year’s back-to-school season over the same period last year. According to Student Monitor, of the students considering buying a laptop within one year, 40 percent plan to buy Dell, while 21 percent said they will opt for a Mac, which is well ahead of HP and Sony at just 6 percent each. In part, observers said, the popularity of Macs results from the “cool” factor that was spawned by the iPod, which has become extremely popular among college students. Coolness only goes so far, however, after which performance is key. Dianne Lynch, dean of the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, said that when the school of communications was deciding which laptop to require incoming freshmen to purchase, it settled on the MacBook Pro because, aside from being cool, the machines came equipped with an “outstanding multimedia software package.”

Inside Higher Ed, 25 October 2006