As college students prepare to return to the classrooms, many of them are carrying an Apple laptop. An Apple MacBook is favored by 47 percent for those college students who’ve yet to purchase a computer and 27 percent of students who already own a laptop are fans of the Cupertino, California company. As Fortune points out, this is a complete turn-around from 2005, when 47 percent of laptop buyers chose Dell.
This year, Dell is the No. 2 (24 percent) laptop brand chosen for college dorms, followed by HP with 15 percent of the college market and Toshiba with 10 percent, according to research firm Student Monitor, a New Jersey firm who has been doing these surveys for nearly a quarter century.
The survey results, while still giving Apple the nod, weren’t as drastic as one analyst’s report, which sent Microsoft shares down 2.5 percent last week. Global Equity’s Trip Chowdhry told investors 70 percent of college freshmen were bringing Macs. The software giant was “failing to connect with the new generation of users,” the analyst warned.
Although Apple is leading in college laptops, the PC community shouldn’t be too sad; 45 percent of university students who own a desktop prefer Dell over Apple, by a wide margin. One problem: 83 percent of college students own laptops.
