Google Launches Play for Education
November 14, 2013
By Michelle Amodio, TMCnet Contributor
Google is inching towards Apple (News - Alert) in the educational tablet market with its new app store called Google Play for Education.
The new app shop will make it easier for educators to find apps, books, videos and other content appropriate for K-12 students, and it will enable bulk purchasing with the ability to distribute apps to a group of students’ tablets wirelessly.
Play for Education will be bundled with Google (News - Alert) Nexus 7 tablets at launch and in early 2014, and it will be bundled with Asus Transformer Pad and HP Slate 8 Pro tablets.
Developers will be able to push their applications to teachers and students by marking their apps for inclusion in Google Play for Education when using the Google Play Developer Console. This means developers will have to create suitable apps for the US K-12 educational market and will have to wait patiently for educators to approve the app’s inclusion on the app storefront.
"With more than 30 million people using Google Apps for Education already, tablets with Google Play for Education easily plug into many schools' existing technology," product manager for Google Play for Education, Rick Borovoy, wrote in the company's official blog. "This is an affordable, 1:1 solution that puts greater power in the hands of teachers to find the best tools and content for their classrooms. We're continuing to evolve the Google in Education offering and are happy to bring even more choice in devices and content."
This step is obviously Google’s entrance into the educational market, a market that has largely been held by Apple and its iPad.
Apple said its iPads accounted for 90 percent of tablet activations last quarter, with the iPad overall holding a 94 percent share of the education market for tablets.
"I've never seen a market share that high before. So we feel like we're doing really well here, and feel great to be making a contribution to education," said Apple CEO Tim Cook during a conference call with analysts at the close of its most recent quarter.
Schools are seeing the financial advantages of investing in iPads. Digital textbooks could save a school around $250 per year and when costs associated with printing handouts are factored in, the cost savings goes much higher.
With Android (News - Alert) tablets being slightly more cost-effective and now with the newly launched Google Play for Education, it will be an interesting quarter to see how the OS contends with Apple’s dominant iPad.
Edited by Cassandra Tucker