Over the last three years, Apple’s iPads and Mac notebooks — which accounted for about half of the mobile devices shipped to schools in the United States in 2013 — have steadily lost ground to Chromebooks, inexpensive laptops<br />that run on Google’s Chrome operating system and are produced by Samsung, Acer and other computer makers.<br />While school administrators generally like the iPad’s touch screens for younger elementary school students, some said<br />older students often needed laptops with built-in physical keyboards for writing and taking state assessment tests.<br />Of the $7.35 billion that schools, colleges and universities spent on mobile<br />and desktop computers in 2016, sales of Apple devices fell to $2.8 billion in 2016, from about $3.2 billion in 2015, according to IDC, a market research firm.<br />Of the 12.6 million mobile devices shipped to primary<br />and secondary schools in the United States in 2016, Chromebooks accounted for 58 percent of the market, up from 50 percent in 2015, according to the report.<br />Mobile devices that run on Apple’s iOS and MacOS operating systems have now reached a new low, falling to third place behind both Google-powered laptops<br />and Microsoft Windows devices, according to a report released on Thursday by Futuresource Consulting, a research company.<br />“We’re incredibly passionate about education and new programs like Apple Teacher,” a site for teachers<br />who want to learn how to more creatively use Apple tools with their students, she said.
