This one shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who has been in a lecture theatre lately, but a study has shown that Apple is now the most popular laptop brand among students. The report from Student Monitor (courtesy of CNN) suggests that the Mac builder has overtaken Dell to command 27 per cent of notebook sales on university campuses.
The stats peg Dell as coming in a close second at 24 per cent, followed by HP at 15 (19 if you include subsidiary Compaq), Toshiba at ten and Sony at five. Unsurprisingly, the tables are turned back again for desktops, with Dell and HP sharing 45 per cent of the market and Apple taking just 14.
The survey also found that of those students planning to buy a new computer, 47 per cent planned to buy a Mac. Interestingly, though, this is the peak of a meteoric rise for Apple. According to the data, the proportion of students planning to buy a Mac laptop stood at only 14 per cent five years ago. In fact, Apple and Dell have almost perfectly switched places over that time period.
Obviously, this still puts Apple firmly in second place in terms of operating systems. While 27 per cent is far higher than the market penetration OSX holds among the wider public, the vast majority of the remaining 73 per cent of computers are still likely to be running Windows.
While statistics are only as good as the data underneath them, questioning 1,200 students at 100 university campuses should give a fair approximation. Even though the data is from the US, we would be surprised if the picture in the UK was that different. Again, anyone who has spent time in university lectures recently would likely agree.
Are students foreshadowing the future of the mainstream market, or is this just a statistical anomaly? Are UK students more or less likely to pick up a MacBook than their US counterparts? Let us know what you think in the HEXUS.community forums.
