If you read one billion's materials, iPads are used as they last longer in the environment they're kept in and get better battery life. When you're charging for a day's use from solar, that matters.
The apps are also written in a cross platform framework. If a good enough Android tablet comes along, it can be used. Their Maths age 3-5 app is available on Google Play.
On one hand it makes sense that iPad is easiest to standardize for classroom use where multiple hands will be handling it during day.
On the other hand, there are plenty of cheap Android tablets <$100. Anecdotally, my 8 year old niece has had one for a year, a cheap no name dual core 7inch 1280x720 model that cost 60 Euros. Sure, the screen has cracked a bit and the hdmi out is not working properly, but she is still happily using the tablet.
>If a good enough Android tablet comes along, it can be used.
You have made valid points. However, the fact on ground shows that this a continent powered by Android in the smart device category. It used to be Blackberry but that is on the way out.
People should be able to afford the device before thinking about how long the battery will last. And I see the apps are available on phones. There are great Android phones that last quite long.
Do you know you need a credit/debit card before you can access the itunes store? How many people have access to that here?
Can you give be a link to the Android app I cannot see it on the website.
So the inner idea is that poor people must buy poor devices and higher quality is not for them. I have this discussion a lot with my customers about why give a more costly iOS device instead of android to their employers.
iOS devices are more higher quality, more durable, more up-to-date in matter of software and have better app selection, quality and less prone to be invaded by virus and that kind of stuff. And yep, if you let people choose only for price them will NOT buy the best best best android device.
Specially because somebody is cash deprived is why the one with most quality, most durable, more long-lasting life is the smart choose, because we don't have money for replacement (We, because I know what is be in that situation).
So, if a charity wanna help poor people, is smart that they choose the best available option, not using the criteria : Poor people? Low-cost for them!
Or you can actually ask a bunch of people in your target market what OS their current device runs. The answer is Android, in this case. In much if Africa, cheap and long life is the way to go, and local variations on worldwide tech reflect that.
The point is that there are already over a hundred million Android devices in use in Africa, with projections for smartphones as a whole for 154 million mobile connections. This of course excludes some devices without connectivity, and it does include some very low end devices.
But even if the number of devices that are advanced enough to run these apps were to only make up 20 million of those projected 154 million today, it's still clear that if these apps were available for Android, a huge number of people would be able to run them without any additional investment in hardware.
Expect those numbers to grow at a dramatic rate over the next couple of years, and the specs to steadily increase - keep in mind that there are African countries that can be expected to reach full saturation of mobile phone connections within the next few years, and while smartphones and tablets are lagging, smartphones at least is rapidly eating into the feature phone market in Africa too.
If iPad's works best for them for the deployments where they pay for hardware, then so be it (though I must say I don't believe it, because of the huge cost differential between decent low end Android hardware and iPads), but at the same time they are self-limiting to an extremely small subset of the devices that are actually in peoples hands, and their own deployments will be a rounding error compared to elswhere.
(even in the UK, where the linked research was done, limiting to iPad's excludes the majority of potential users)
> Specially because somebody is cash deprived is why the one with most quality, most durable, more long-lasting life is the smart choose
That is only true if 1) the higher quality option is cheap enough to be possible to afford at any point. It doesn't help if it's better if you can't obtain it. 2) the cost of repeated replacement of a lower quality option exceeds the cost of the higher quality option, including the opportunity cost incurred by paying much more upfront for the higher quality device.
This also means that there may very well be very different cost/benefit tradeoffs for a charity vs. someone paying out of their own pocket.
> because we don't have money for replacement
You can get a decent quality Android tablet in the $40-$50 range (AllWinner A23 or A13 based dual core tablet with Android 4.2 and 16GB flash; 7" 800x600 screen; these are no speed daemons but they are good enough to stream video and play a decent portion of 3D games etc; double that and you can start to find devices with IPS displays in the 1280x720 range) even before you start looking at volume discounts. If you don't have enough money for replacement that may just as well be because you chose an extremely high cost device to begin with.
Yes, you sacrifice quality. Yet my son seems to decide whether to use his 7" low end Android tablet or his moms iPad Air based on which game he wants to play, not on the device.
The current distribution is handled at the school level - this isn't about individual's devices. I highly suggest you read the report by the University of Nottingham before jumping to conclusions.
people are down voting me because their small minds think it is an iPhone vs. Android talk
I live here in Nigeria. You would be hard pressed to find iPhones. Many people in the UK/US are surprised to learn that we buy our phones full price. ZERO monthly payments.
As a result, people will buy what they can afford. You can find a lot of very functional sub $100 Android phones. Even Windows phones have a better penetration because of cost.
If this is a product targeted at the West, I would not have commented but this is called Malawi App for a reason.
It is not about poor people deserving poor devices as @mamcx has suggested but people going to buy what they can afford.
If you can reach 5X the number of people with the same amount of buying iphones and the disadvantage is obviously (if any) is not 5X, it is not a clear decision?
The apps are also written in a cross platform framework. If a good enough Android tablet comes along, it can be used. Their Maths age 3-5 app is available on Google Play.
Disclosure: I'm familiar with the team.