The News: Qualcomm recently announced that the company worked with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to procure and deploy 100,000 Chromebooks outfitted with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c Compute Platform offering students excellent connectivity with 4G/LTE-connected devices, helping bridge the digital divide in a cost-effective manner. See the full release from Qualcomm.
Qualcomm and LA Unified School District Deploy Fleet of More than 100,000 Chromebooks Powered by Snapdragon
Analyst Take: Qualcomm has collaborated with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) over the course of the last decade plus. The company has not only helped LAUSD in its goal of both preparing students for college and careers, it has also been passionate about helping bridge the digital divide. Recent news of Qualcomm’s collaboration with LAUSD to procure and deploy 100,000 4G/LTE connected Chromebooks powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c Compute Platform is big news for both the district and its students.
The LAUSD is the second largest district in the country, serving a student body of approximately 575,000 students, who are incredibly diverse with over 98 languages spoken. Like other districts during the pandemic, LAUSD faced incredible pressure when students and instructional staff were forced to work remotely, which of course shed additional light on the digital divide when it comes to connectivity. In fact, in some instances, the districts deployed school buses to serve as Wi-Fi hotspots, and in other instances, students were forced to visit local restaurants and other facilities that had publicly available Wi-Fi.
To help the LAUSD thwart some of these issues as it strives to fulfill its mission of trying to prepare all students for postsecondary education or technical career readiness, the school outlined three requirements when selecting new Chromebooks for its students. These requirements were simple: processing speed for video conferencing, privacy, and connectivity, all of which the Snapdragon 7c easily filled.
On the processing front, the district uses Minecraft Education, which is very CPU intensive. Students have the ability to immerse themselves in games, allowing them to study subjects such as mathematics, chemistry, computer science, and more allowing the students to see cause and effect, which is an excellent learning tool versus reading in a book. A great example of this in action is in the chemistry module, which allows students to assemble elements using the element instructor by adjusting protons, electrons, and neutrons. Students can see in real-time how to construct the elements (e.g., fire, water, sand, etc.) and how they are used in the game, which accelerates learning. From a connectivity perspective, the Snapdragon 7c platform also includes excellent 4G/LTE connectivity for those students that do not have access to Wi-Fi in the home.
Qualcomm’s PC Expansion Strategy is Gaining Traction
Massive school districts such as the LAUSD are often excellent use cases for other districts seeking best practices to help manage their own districts or campuses, which is why partnerships like the one LAUSD has with Qualcomm are so valuable. Other districts can see first-hand how successful decisions like opting for an economical PC like a Chromebook can be and also help facilitate and spur learning while at the same time meeting budget requirements.
For Qualcomm, I see this as the company’s PC strategy gaining traction. In fact, during the second quarter of 2023 (April, May, June) the U.S. B2B IT channel (e.g., resellers and distributors), report that a massive chunk of notebook unit sales are Chromebooks, which sales typically peak in June when the education buying the fiscal year ends.
My view is this is another notch in the stick for Qualcomm’s PC expansion strategy continuing to gain traction in the market as its vendor partners continue to develop models using their platform (e.g., Snapdragon 7c) coupled with end-users finding excellent use cases to adopt them.
In fact, one of the key markets I expect the devices to continue to perform well is in the K12 market, which is a massive adopter of classroom technologies such as Chromebooks, interactive whiteboards (IWBs), document cameras, projectors, classroom responders, surveillance cameras and Wi-Fi just to name a few where many schools receive E-Rate funding from the FCC.
Wrapping it up, Qualcomm’s traction with its Snapdragon 7c SoC in the LAUSD is not a surprise at all as the district is trying to solve problems such as thwarting the digital divide that was highly visible during the pandemic. Low-cost devices with excellent connectivity and processing power make perfect sense and should continue to delight districts and other vertical markets in the future.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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