to shut down ay Store for ucation as classroom focus turns to Chromebooks

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Published 17 Feb 2016

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Disclosure

The final school bell is about to ring on ay for ucation. 

will soon shut down the program, which provided schools with tablets licenses to bundle app purchases from the ay Store. will continue to support those enrolled until the expiration of their contracts.

A spokesperson confirmed the closure in a statement to TechCrunch:

“As of h 14 or later, will no longer sell ay for ucation licenses. ’re committed to providing schools with the best-in-class tools for the classroom, including Chromebooks, which are the #1 selling device in K-12 education, a strong growing ecosystem of educational apps. ’ll continue to support our ay for ucation customers the devices that they have purchased.”

’s move is a pivot toward putting more resources into its burgeoning Chromebook effort. The Internet-centric laptops have become very popular in the classroom due to their low cost easy deployment—students can quickly sign in out with a account. 

ile Android tablets have a similar sign-on model, a touchscreen mobile operating system can be limiting in some situations. Additionally, schools must ensure that student devices are able to work with stardized testing, which is increasingly delivered over the Internet requires essay composition with a keyboard.

y this matters: Chromebooks are schooling the id in the education market. They’re cheap, easy to manage, , unlike tablets, include a physical keyboard trackpad. New Chromebooks focused on schools continue to launch, indicating there’s far more preference in the classroom for laptops than tablets alone.