Apple Just Incentivized Every College Kid To Get An iPad. As For High Schoolers...
Context & Ripple Effects
The confirmed college-student iPad incentive caps a year-long arc: BGR reported in May 2011 that Apple was weighing a back-to-school special with $200 off an iPad or a free iPod touch, and by July 2011 AppleInsider judged that promo was already clobbering Microsoft's efforts in the student market. The Cult of Mac argument from May 2011 that every child in America needs an iPad framed the demand side; this incentive is Apple answering it — but only above a certain age.
First-order effects
- College students now have a direct price lever pushing them toward the iPad at purchase time, reinforcing a device that already carried 97% of tablet web traffic as of October 2011.
- High schoolers fall outside the eligibility line, so the near-term buyer for that segment remains parents and districts rather than students themselves.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft and Android tablet makers are forced to match student pricing or concede the campus channel, extending the competitive pressure AppleInsider flagged in mid-2011.
- A larger installed base of student iPads raises the value of education content — textbooks, course apps — for publishers deciding which tablet ecosystem to prioritize.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, education becomes a subsidized acquisition channel where platform loyalty is formed before first employment, making school-eligibility rules a strategic boundary rather than a marketing detail.
The trend: Tablet vendors are shifting from selling devices to subsidizing them inside education, competing to own the student installed base.