The iPad Gets A Mammoth Shot In-The-Arm After San Diego School District Orders 26,000 Units

Photo Via: 9-to-5 iPad.com

In a forward looking policy that ensures that its educational system is up to date with the latest and greatest enhancements in technology, the San Diego school district, in a voter-approved funding program known as "Proposition S," has agreed to the acquisition of  a whopping 26,000 brand spanking-new iPads, at a cost of some $15-million.

As noted by AppleInsider:

"the district has not indicated exactly what software students will use, though a likely candidate would be Apple's own iBooks software, which was enhanced for digital textbooks with the release of iBooks 2 early this year." 

All of the iPad 2 units will be used by the districts 5th- and 8th-grade students, and will also be used by some of, but not all of its school students. Sand Diego's previous iPad investment was even noted by Apple's chief financial officer during its last April quarterly earnings call, which then saw the district purchased a total of some 10,000 iPads with the intention of purchasing more in the future, as it has now just done.

Regarding Apple's U.S. K-12 customers, Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's financial officer, stated previously that educational customers have already purchased twice as many iPads as they did Macs during the March quarter, which is something that I'm sure that both Google and Microsoft have taken  note of, and no doubt, would love to duplicate at Apple's expense, of course.

San Diego's purchase has certainly got to be good news to Apple and it should help encourage many of its other K-12 customers to follow suit. Imagine if San Diego's adoption of the iPad is repeated by hundreds, if not thousands of U.S. and other foreign education buyers, then, surely the impact on Apple's financial statement the next time around is going to be very, very impressive indeed and very encouraging, except of course, to Apple's competitors.

In conclusion, the iPad makes perfect sense an educational setting, and even though iPads are not exactly cheap,  they're certainly a lot cheaper than many laptops and desktops. Also, its overall form factor and its rapidly growing selection of exceptional and first-rate educational software makes it a must have for many cash-strapped school districts the world over. I can see good things ahead for tablets in an educational setting, and that particularly goes for the iPad specifically.





And that's my 2 cents 4 this extremely rainy Tuesday, June 26, 2012