Education Market Research, an association with Simba Information, recently released a new survey report on the Tablet market called National Survey of Tablet/Mobile Device Usage. The top of the trees numbers, in terms of the installed base of computing devices, show approximately 13.2 million computing devices in K-12 schools, composed mainly of desktops (4.7 million), laptops (3.9 million), and tablets (2.3 million).
The growth in this market, specifically in the tablet segment, is quite robust, certainly by normal K-12 standards. "When we look at the average tablet spending cited by our survey respondents, and extrapolate to all schools and districts, we estimate that around 1.9 million tablets were bought in the 2013-14 school year. And the average expected increase in tablet spending in the 2014-15 school year is 8.6%. At that rate, the number of installed tablets in 2014-15 will nearly double compared to 2013-14," said Dr. Robert M. Resnick, president and principal researcher for Education Market Research.
The next obvious question is, "who is the beneficiary of all of this K-12 spending on tablets?" This report details the 2013-14 school year market shares of Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Google, and sixteen other brands. It also shows which tablet brands educators are most likely to buy in 2014-15.
How many Chromebooks are there in K-12 schools at present? It appears that Chromebooks have crossed the 1 million units mark, with lots of growth potential in the next few years.
The next key question is, according to Dr. Resnick, "What are educators doing with all of those computing devices?" The report shows that desktop computers are still very useful in the K-12 environment. In fact, they are the first choice of educators for certain purposes. On the other hand, laptops, tablets, phones, and other "smart" devices have their own unique role inside and outside of the classroom, as described by the survey respondents.
Taken together, the survey data paints a detailed portrait of today's K-12 market for computing devices, particularly tablets, in 2013-14 and 2014-15. The information and analysis contained in this report is intended to help school product developers and marketers sharpen the focus of their digital product plans.
