Apple Is "Climbing the Ivory Tower," Says BusinessWeek

by , 4:00 PM EDT, August 5th, 2004

BusinessWeek's Alex Salkever has been busy this week. The magazine has published a series of special reports on Apple, including some from Alex Salkever, as well as computer editor Peter Burrows. Today, Mr. Salkever penned his regular Byte of the Apple column about Apple's deal with Motorola, as well as another special report on what he says is Apple's increasing success in higher education. In that report, Mr. Salkever highlights some of Apple's specific successes on college campuses, including some sales numbers. From the report:

Berkeley isn't the only campus where Macs are flying off the shelves. While the percentage of Macs sold at the Scholars Workstation is far higher than Apple's market share as tracked by PC market-research firms, CEO Steven P. Jobs and his troops have clearly been on a college roll. In each of the past three quarters, Apple has posted 40% increases in year-over-year sales for this segment.

During the first half of its current fiscal year, Apple posted an 18% bump in year-over-year education sales. And most of that has come from higher education, since the K-12 market has remained almost flat for Apple (see BW Online, 8/3/04, "Apple's Back-to-School Blast"). Clearly the Mac is climbing the Ivory Tower.

What's behind the college revival? Credit Apple's one-two laptop punch -- the lower-end iBook and the more powerful PowerBook, which are packing a wallop. "They have the right products at the right time," says Kenneth C. Green, director of the Campus Computing Project

There's much more in the full report, including more specific numbers on Apple's growth in this market, and comment from analysts on Apple's potential.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Of course, most of the world looks only at total market share, which includes markets that Apple doesn't target, but the company could combat that by releasing market share numbers for the above markets, assuming such figures could be obtained. That would make for some more appropriate apple-to-apples comparisons, pun intended.

In any event, it's great to see Apple doing so well in higher education.

BusinessWeek Article