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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1646
The Macintosh Way: Get 'Em While They're Young
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
February 5th 2003
An Apple for elementary education.
Apple has finally figured out how to grow its customer base: gets Macs into kids' hands
That the approach Apple, Lexmark and others are taking by giving free hardware to
schools and contributing to their learning plans. It costs relaitvely little, but
generates lots of goodwill.
Lexmark has spent about $16,500 on donated inkjet printers, [we're assuming they're
not DeskJets] educational CD-ROMs and books to elementary schools in Jefferson County,
according to a story in the Courier Journal. Schools also qualify for discounts on
printer products from Lexmark.
"'Apple and other companies have moved into younger end users in a very effective way
by meeting them in an educational environement,'' he said. ''When we started looking
at our products, it was clear that images might be an area where we could play," said
Roger Rydell of Lexmark.
Rydell adds that the computer kids use at school increasingly dictates the type of PC
parents purchase for the home - in effect, it's a customer loyalty program. Teachers
also give the initiative the thumbs-up: the kids get to work on art projects on
computers, learn how to use the software, check out canvas classics, and print out
their own Rembrandt on color inkjets.
Analysis: Smart. We don't know how much of this Apple does nation-wide or globally,
but from the days of the Apple II, Jobs always knew that education was the key to
Apple's success. But Apple Ed is under threat as cheap, commodified PCs are tempting
purchases for schools, which frequently don't consider TCO in terms of the support
salaries that cost real money.
Put it this way: donate some Mac hardware and software. Costs a few hundred thousand,
may a couple of million dollars, depending on how wide you cast the net. The parents
buy a Mac as well - maybe two, depending on the number of kids. How much more
effective is that than putting pricey iMac ads on network TV? More to the point, you
put a Mac - even a donated one - in education and that's one less Dell schools will
buy. Heck, Apple could even farm out some of those inventorised, written-off CRT iMacs
and the just-superseded Power Macs they're fireselling.
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