“I am not going to predict that they are going to take back the entire market or anything like that, but this is the best move that I could have seen them making against Chromebooks,” said J. P. Gownder, a technology analyst at Forrester Research, a market research company, where Microsoft is one of his clients. By contrast, Mr. Gownder of Forrester Research said that Microsoft software is so feature-rich that technology experts in many school districts have had to devote their summers to preparing Windows laptops for students one device at a time. While Microsoft had successfully developed a loyal following among teachers for certain tools — like Skype and its OneNote notebook organizer program — the company had no answer for the classroom management system, which Google had developed specifically for teachers. Chromebooks accounted for 58 percent of the 12.6 million mobile devices shipped to primary and secondary schools in the United States last year, compared with less than 1 percent in 2012, according to Futuresource Consulting, a research company. Apple recently introduced an iPad management app called Classroom, which enables teachers to assign shared iPads to students and create virtual classrooms to guide students through lessons. By contrast, Windows laptops and tablets made up 21.6 percent of the mobile-device shipments to schools in the United States last year, down from about 43 percent in 2012.
