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Apple has second place in US education sales, according to a CBS Marketwatch story on the all-important back-to-school season.

Dell is in first place with 33.1% of the education market in the first quarter, with Apple on 13.6%. Pre-merger Compaq held third place with 9%.

As IGM has reported previously, Dell has deployed a small number of kiosks thoughout the US to put a type of shop front onto the mail-order PC company; to "put a face on Dell", as one company spokesperson put it.

The back-to-school is critical for PC makers, particularly in a soft market. Yesterday, Apple demonstrated the importance it attached to education sales by releasing new Power Mac G4s, a DVD-R-equipped eMac, a higher-spec base eMac, and cut-price LCD iMac G4s.

Some recent consumer surveys, such as one published recently by ZDNet, suggest that students have the biggest say in decisions regarding PC purchases, with parents accounting for only around 30% of decisions on PC brands and types.

In the MP3 player market, where Apple's iPod is a strong contender, students wield even more leverage. The level of students' disposable income has also made a difference, with buyers wanting'cool' gadgets, which are not necessarily available from the cheapest brand names.

Apple has not refreshed its PowerBook or iBook lines for some time, with the latter a major seller among education notebooks. Nor has it engaged in widespread price cuts, as it has with the iMac line.

Analysts in the Marketwatch story predict that desktop sales will be soft, but notebook purchases could be strong. In the last two years, notebook sales have gained significantly on desktops in overall PC market share.

The second quarter this year experienced a decrease in sales on 2001, with the anticipated 'dads and grads' sales failing to reach expected levels in 2002.

Gateway, which is struggling for survival, has begun to market its notebooks particularly aggressively, with offers of free client/teacher copies of Windows XP.

The story also says that Dell's '$50,000 per day giveaway' staged recently performed beyond expectations, but did not reveal sales figures, stating they were "unavailable".

Analysis: While yesterday's new Power Macs and eMacs represent astoundingly good value, I, for one, am a little worried that Apple hasn't targeted PowerBook, and especially iBook, for big discount deals. Especially with no refresh, this is a cut-throat season for notebooks, and iBook has proven to be the backbone of Apple's profitability for the last few quarters (it certainly hasn't been the old iMac or even the new one).

Still, the iBooks might be priced OK already, particularly compared to Gateway's $1,399 notebook, which features nothing special at all. I've looked at a 14.1" Dell lately for $200 more than the base iBook 12.1", but it was poorly equipped compared to the iceBook and offered nothing except the 14.1" (XGA) LCD. But for some reason people keep buying them...