Apple is fighting to win back a market it used to dominate

Apple's spring event this year is unusual for the company - it's taking place in Chicago, not California, and it's going to happen at a public magnet high school. Even the invite suggests that whatever Apple CEO Tim Cook ends up revealing next Tuesday will be education focused.

It's the latest sign that Apple wants to reverse its slide to Google in what was once one of its core markets: schools.

While Apple has long been associated with American elementary, middle, and high schools, in recent years it's been losing ground to Google in particular, as well as Microsoft.

"If we look five years ago, when the market was really just starting, Apple sort of ruled the roost and had 50% market share in US schools at least," Futuresource analyst Ben Davis said. "They've lost a lot a share in K-12 in 2017."

Apple's iPad had 15% of computer sales to "K-12" schools last year, and its MacBook had a 4.6% market share, according to data from Futuresource, a market researcher that closely watches the educational market.

Compare that to Google's Chromebook platform, which accounted for 58.3% of devices shipped last year.

Figures from data researcher IDC also back this up, which said that Chromebooks sales started to top MacBooks since early 2016.

Perhaps that's why Cook and other Apple leaders are planning and rehearsing a corporate event that's going to take place at a magnet high school.

It's also why the one device that Apple is most likely to announce on Tuesday is a low-cost iPad, which will be perfect for schools, according to Bloomberg.

iPad focus

One of the trends driving the education market is "Common Core" online testing. The two main organizations that manage Common Core testing require devices to have a keyboard, Fortune reported in 2015.

But the primary device that Apple targets at schools is the iPad - which doesn't have a physical keyboard.

Cook's addressed this dynamic before, with an unusually cutting remark in 2015 in which he said that Chromebooks and cheap Windows laptops were "test machines," and that Apple had no plan to race to the bottom.

"We are interested in helping students learn and teachers teach, but tests, no," Cook told Buzzfeed.

There have been some signs that teachers and students agree that Apple's laptops are a better fit for schools, too. In 2016, a Maine school district gave iPads to students from grades 7 through 12 - and one teacher said "the iPads are a disaster," complaining that students primarily use them to play games during class.

Other teachers complained that the students used the iPads as toys, and that word processing was "near to impossible."

Students agreed. One just wrote "WE NEED LAPTOPS!!!" over and over in the district study.

But Apple's laptops are significantly more expensive than the iPad, which currently retails for as little as $299 on Apple's educational price list. And Apple is unlikely to play the same cost-cutting game as Google and Microsoft's hardware partners can, so it will have to stand out some other way. Prices for large numbers of Windows PCs or Chromebooks for schools can go as low as $150 per device, according to Futuresource.

That's because Google and Microsoft don't sell the machines - so they don't mind a price race to the bottom. Microsoft and Google want to provide the software.

"In the long term, it's not about devices, it's about getting schools in that platform and trading them up to a cloud infrastructure," Davis said.

Software

Apple is also likely to reveal new software for the classroom on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. In 2016, it bought LearnSprout, a small startup that provides a dashboard and analytics for teachers.

Even the realm of classroom software management is a space where Apple now lags Google, which makes "G Suite for Education," a version of Google Apps for schools and teachers. Its Google Classroom app is popular enough that Google is planning to release a version for businesses, according to The Information.

Apple has software called "Apple Classroom" that works with iPads.

Apple was "not focused on their own productivity suite," Davis said.

"One of the big drivers that both Google and Microsoft offer is 365 or G Suite for education, including email and productivity tools and all of that. Apple does have productivity tools in its iWork solution, but it's obviously not kind of a mainstay at the company, there hasn't been as much focus and development for the education sector," Davis said. "Google and Microsoft built out those platform tools alongside the devices more effectively, I would say."

One advantage Apple's software may have over rivals is that Apple's software has a very good reputation for securing user data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit privacy activist group, raised questions last year whether Google was properly handling student data.

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