Maine schools reup Apple laptop program

Posted Jun 30th 2006 11:01AM by Tobias Buckell
Filed under: Deals, Good news, Products and Services, Industry, Consumer Experience, Competitive Strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL)

What greater way to spread the Apple brand than dump it in front of 32,000 students and 4,000 teachers throughout some 241 schools? While also securing a $41 million contract?

Sadly, it's just one drop in a very large PC dominated market. Apple education has a long way to go before it becomes the player it once was. Yet it's still encouraging to know that know 70,000 teachers and students are using the platform.

The very well publicized Maine school system rolled out Apple laptops back in 2002. It was, at the time, heavily criticized. Now articles quote that the districts keep the laptops at the end of their lease instead of discarding them, and the program constantly generates lots of positive material for Apple. It's good to see it is continuing, and one hopes we'll see another district pick up the platform.

[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]

Tags: apple in education, AppleInEducation, maine