It seems that Microsoft Teams has not just become extremely popular as a workplace tool – it is increasingly being used for educational purposes as well, with over 100 million students now using the collaboration tool.
It is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact that it has had on face-to-face learning has resulted in a surge of users for Microsoft Teams. Only around seven million students and teachers used the platform at the start of the 2019 school year, while this figure had only reached 30 million by September 2020.
Microsoft obviously views the education sector as one with great market potential. Last month, the firm announced that it now has more than 200 million users of Microsoft Education products, including teachers, students, and faculty leaders. At the same time, the company also unveiled several new hardware products designed to cater to school children.
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Competition for school places
However, despite the increase in the number of Teams users, Eran Megiddo, corporate vice president at Microsoft Education stressed in a blog post that the company should not rest on its laurels in the education space. Other tech firms are also looking at ways to boost revenue in this area, including the likes of Google and Apple.
In fact, Megiddo confirmed that the company’s Windows PCs often struggle to compete with Google’s Chromebooks in terms of speed and price, factors that make them well suited to the education market.
The competition for schools among technology providers is a global one, with very few markets not facing significant disruption to their traditional learning methods. Although Microsoft has posted notable successes in various countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Senegal, in others, the ease of use boasted by Google’s Chromebooks has left the firm struggling to compete with its rival.
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Via Business Insider
