Textbooks in the classroom could soon be a thing of the past, according to analyst firm Futuresource, as mobile devices move into the education space. By 2015, the analyst forecasts, nearly one in four children in primary and secondary education in the US will be using a school- or district- funded mobile computing device in the classroom – a number equating to annual sales volumes of over 4m units.

The US currently has a 13 per cent student penetration for portable educational devices in schools – meaning any students who have individual notebooks, netbooks or tablets provided by the state. Trailing behind are the UK, with a 5 per cent student penetration, and Germany, at only 0.3 per cent.

Even the US, however, pales in comparison, however, to some countries with more centralized funding and decision-making operations – like Portugal (with 91 per cent penetration), Uruguay (80 per cent), and Argentina (19 per cent) – which are able to implement large-scale deployments into schools.

“Many large and financially established countries have concentrated on traditional teaching methods and as a consequence their technology adoption in schools has remained relatively low,” says Joe Mugan, Market Analyst, Futuresource Consulting. “The interest is coming from elsewhere: the areas to watch in 2012 include Turkey, Thailand and the Middle East, where multi-billion dollar nationwide tenders are likely to be initiated.”