In a smart marketing move, Apple has invited more universities across the country to sign up for Itunes U, offering lectures and other educational information available through ITunes. Apple’s service offers universities a customized version of the iTunes software, allowing schools to post podcasts, audio books or video content on their iTunes-affiliated Web sites. The iTunes-based material will be accessible on Windows-based or Macintosh computers and transferable to portable devices, including Apple’s iPods.
I consider this a win-win situation. Apple gets the students using their service, with the hope that they will use it for paying services as well. Many of the students will have been introduced to the service through their personal use of the service prior to college, but I could see Apple and the individual universities partnering to offer their students the ability to purchase iPod’s for school work, either at reduced rates or as part of their tuition.
For the school’s part, they get to experiment with new technologies to offer their students the most options while in school. It gives them a marketing advantage over another school that did not offer the same service. It also offers them the opportunity to experiment with alternative methods of teaching and information dissemination, with their software costs most likely underwritten by Apple.
As a final positive, the schools can decide whether they want to offer this service to their students only, or open it to the public. Ideally, even if they didn’t want to offer it to the public at large, they could find a way to offer it to the communities they are part of. The relationship between the community and the universities can be a positive factor for both, and offering a service like this to them would garner a lot of good will.
Source: MSNBC.com
Posted by Jeff
