Dell & Apple Duke It Out For Small Pittsburgh School District

by , 9:00 AM EDT, June 8th, 2001

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette is reporting that Apple is in the lead for a bid to supply the Quaker Valley School District's students and teachers with computers. The school district is small, with some 1600 students and 70 teachers, and was the recipient of a US$2 million education grant from the state of Pennsylvania. The paper is reporting that the deal will include 1600 iBooks, 70 PowerBook G4s, a few G4 Cubes for the library (fanless and quiet), and a PowerSchool package for helping teachers, students, and parents work together to monitor the students' progress. PowerSchool was acquired by Apple on March 14th of this year.

The school board hasn't yet voted to approve the deal yet, but the article's tone suggests that Apple is in the lead and has the proposal that the district wishes its board to approve. The really interesting thing is that the vendor-list was narrowed to two contenders, Apple and our old friends at Dell. According to the article:

District officials had narrowed the choice of hardware supplier to Dell and Apple. While the board still must formally award the contract to Apple, it has released some details of Apple's proposal.

Under the proposal, Apple will provide the teachers' computers for free. Joe Marrone, district technology director, said the district could not have afforded such powerful computers otherwise. Also included are upgrades to district secretaries' computer systems.

The total hardware and service package from Apple would normally carry a $5 million price tag. But Marrone said Apple offered the package to Quaker Valley at less than half that amount. He declined to give an exact price until the district formally approves the contract.

School staff yesterday also got a peek at the district's new student accounting system by PowerSchool. The integrated grade-book software allows teachers and parents to monitor everything from grades to homework to lunch money accounts 24 hours a day with just the click of a mouse. The software normally costs in the $200,000-to-$250,000 range but the district negotiated a price just under $75,000.

There is more information in the article that we did not quote, so check it out. Thanks to Observer Kathy for pointing us to this article.

The Mac Observer Spin:

There's some interesting little tidbits in this story that the mainstream newspaper probably didn't realize was unusual. First of all, Apple is not prone to making deals, especially deals that amount to a 50% price cut. Then there is the notion of them giving away 70 PowerBooks to seal the deal; Apple is just not known for doing that sort of thing. If this is true, there is little doubt that Apple is quite frustrated that the terms of the deal are leaking, though perhaps not since such a leak was inevitable. Among the few groups that are watched more closely than Apple is school boards.

Back to our point. Judging this story at face value suggests that Apple was pretty darned keen on making this deal happen. That might well indeed have a lot to do with the PowerSchool element. Apple acquired PowerSchool in the middle of March, and needs to get the product installed in some schools under its own brand in order to offer a proof-of-concept to other school districts.

On the other hand, we could be totally off base with our suppositions and hunches. Perhaps this is merely the face of Apple's new effort to win back market share in education. We doubt it, however, as Apple works very hard to maintain their gross margins, and selling Macs at half-price is no way to do that.

Then again, our friends at Dell might have something to do with this too. The rivalry between the companies has only been heating up in recent months with both Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, and Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, have been going at it head-to-head for the last few months. Michael Dell took some cheap shots at Steve Jobs and Apple on CNBC on May 17th, Steve Jobs poked fun at Dell's consumer portable when the new iBook was released, Dell's vice presidents have made extremely inappropriate comments about Apple's prospects, and so on back to when it all started with Mr. Dell saying that Apple should be sold off for parts and Mr. Jobs putting a target on Mr. Dell's face and saying that Dell was in Apple's sights. The rivalry is no secret, in other words, and the bottom line is that Apple really wants to take back the education crown and Dell doesn't want to give it up (see our political cartoon on this topic). This could be an instance of someone being instructed to "do what it takes, I don't care what it costs!" We'll probably never know.

Slice it up any way you want, but we are tickled pink that Apple is moving aggressively in the education market.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article