8/15/2005
Apple and Education
David Sobotta posts a thorough followup in Apple’s higher education challenge to some comments and questions I posted previously regarding Apple’s stance in the higher education market past and present.
When I was running one of Apple’s very successful mid-nineties higher education teams, the absolute goal was to get a letter from the campus recommending the purchase of a Mac and create a bundle that would be hard to duplicate off campus. We knew from experience that buying off campus likely meant the student would end up with a Windows box.
Those were the days that Dartmouth required Macintosh purchase of all students. Not only did Apple provide special pricing, but Apple also often invested with the universities in new projects that either drove academic or even administrative computing. It was a great partnership between Apple and higher education. Around 1996 Apple reorganized its higher education division almost out of existence. Many of the key people who had driven these great relationships ended up at Dell or Compaq. I ended up selling to business and government customers as Apple decided that Duke, UNC, Penn State, University of Virginia, Maryland, George Washington, Georgetown, Virginia Tech, NC State, and other mid-Atlantic schools would be better served by coverage from a manager located in Texas as opposed to one in close geographic proximity like my Virginia location.
Well worth a read for an insider’s perspective on Apple’s marketing.
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