Apple’s Educational Prowess
Apple is by no means a newcomer to the education market. Graduating high school seniors wait for the start of the annual Apple summer sale, at which point they can get a free iPod along with the purchase of a Mac. With the iPod Touch occupying the top rung in the iPod lineup, the device is well worth the wait (of the end of the school year). But Apple does much more than give away free iPods to entice students and the education market at large! Apple has abundant resources that offer both faculty as well as school administrators the means to publish content online. This points business back in the direction of the iTunes Store as well as the company’s hardware products.
TUAW reported earlier this month that the University of Florida College of Pharmacy has made it a requirement that students own an iPhone or an iPod Touch. A college requiring a specific kind of cell phone or music player? Isn’t that a bit much? Isn’t college already expensive enough? The Alligator, an independent school news publication, reported on the story back on July 9th. In the story, the Dean of the College of Pharmacy said, “These are the instruments at the forefront that are developing applications for medical uses by the hundreds. We want our students to become adept at using these mobile devices early on because we see this as the future in pharmacy practice.” Quite a tall order to fill. But this wasn’t the first university-wide application of the popular Apple cell phone or music player. Earlier in the year, the University of Missouri implemented the use of an iPod Touch in order to help students retain information. Brian Brooks, associate dean of the Missouri School of Journalism told the campus newspaper about his decision to make the device a requirement for incoming freshmen: “Lectures are the worst possible learning format,” Brooks said. “There’s been some research done that shows if a student can hear that lecture a second time, they retain three times as much of that lecture.”
Can the requirements for iPod Touch/iPhone on college campuses be considered a trend that’s sweeping the nation? It’s hard to tell. The iPod has been around since 2001 and from the day it was born, Apple has yet to see significant market competition. Apple’s most recent quarterly earnings yielded a 7 percent decrease in iPod sales from the same quarter last year, but a 626 percent unit growth for the iPhone. Here’s what the numbers could tell us: Read more »
Posted in Apple, Education, Marketing, Touch, Trends, iPhone
