Hi, I'm Naomi Chaven and welcome to a special four-part weekend edition of Axios Recap,

focused on the unique challenges of Back to School in 2020.

This is all tied to an Axios deep dive presented by Pearson.

And this particular episode digs into the device drought that could render remote learning irrelevant.

That conversation with Dan Primak in 15 seconds.

Dan contributed reporting to this deep dive.

Dan, let's start with the pipeline issue.

You mentioned that sales surged in the US just as manufacturing slowdowns were affecting China.

What's the status of the pipeline at this point?

It's a mess. So we're really specifically talking here mostly about Chromebooks, which are kind of these relatively low price, but pretty well-performing laptops, which are really popular, particularly in K-8.

Sales started surging in March as kids started working remotely.

Lots of school districts started buying them. They kind of pulled up their buying from the summer

into the spring. But where we are right now is there is a shortage, a huge shortage. You know,

on just the other day, I did a search on Best Buy's website for the any Chromebooks under $400.

And there were, I think my numbers were there were 28 of them.

24 were already sold out.

Two more you could only get if you were willing to buy the ones that are already opened in

the boxes, you know, they'll give you those.

So there just is not nearly enough supply and you have districts throughout the country

that are trying to source them right now and struggling to do so. And that

doesn't even take into account individual parents who are trying to get them for their kids.

What would be involved in ramping up the supply? Is that even feasible? It doesn't seem to really be

...