Apple's education shipments grow as desktop sales surge

Macworld - Shipments of notebook and desktop computers to the lucrative education market have grown for Apple Computer Inc. over the past year as the company sees shipments of desktops begin to surge. Apple is following the usual up-and-down trends typically found in the education buying seasons, but the company has made some headway.

Apple currently finds itself in third place in worldwide education computer shipments, behind Dell in first place and Hewlett-Packard Co. in second place. Rounding out the top five are Lenovo and Founder.

In the U.S., Apple is in second place behind Dell. HP, Gateway and Lenovo round out the top five.

Year over year, Apple is seeing growth for education shipments both in the U.S. and worldwide. Comparing the fourth quarter of 2004 to the fourth quarter of 2005, Apple saw its education computer shipments rise 15.08% worldwide and 13.79% in the U.S. By comparison, education leader Dell saw its worldwide shipments rise 6.51%, while its U.S. shipments rose by 3.84%.

Apple's closest growth competitor is HP, which saw worldwide growth of 13.54% and 9.9% growth in the U.S. Gateway saw a decrease of 24.53% in its U.S. shipments, and Founder saw its worldwide shipments go up by 22.52%. Finally, Lenovo saw an increase of 1.79% in U.S. growth and a decrease of 9.3% worldwide.

Shipments of desktop computers for Apple accounted for 54% of its total PC shipments in the second quarter of 2005. By comparison, desktops accounted for 51.8% of total shipments in the second quarter of 2004.

"I don't think anyone expected to see growth in desktops and not see as much comparable growth in iBooks," said IDC analyst David Daoud. "They are definitely doing something right, but the average sell price is $1,200-$1,300, so it must be something other than the Mac Mini."

Daoud says that Apple's brand recognition is definitely helping it keep its current share of the education market. Another factor keeping Apple in the game is the way it markets itself compared to its competitors.

"Clearly, what Apple has is the name recognition in the education market, and they are doing a very good job marketing it," said Daoud. "They are very well entrenched in the teaching community — Apple's competitors really market to the IT staff."

One product line that IDC sees helping Apple over its competitors is the diminutive iPod MP3 player. As schools and classrooms find new and innovative ways to utilize the iPod, Daoud believes sales build up on the PC side.

"The iPod has added another

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