Affiliate Disclosure
If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Read our ethics policy.

Enterprise adopting Apple products as company becomes 'easier to work with'

Apple's recent success in the enterprise comes as the company has worked to cater to businesses' needs, and also as Chief Executive Tim Cook has shown a friendlier side than companies were used to with Steve Jobs.

Profiling the growth in enterprise sales Apple has seen in recent years, The New York Times revealed on Wednesday that while Jobs disliked catering to business needs, Cook is "more at ease" meeting with enterprise customers. It noted that Jobs disliked working with businesses so much that at a conference in 2005, he referred to chief information officers as "orifices."

"While corporate technology buyers say Apple does not try to hide the fact that consumers are still its top priority, they note that the company has gotten easier to work with in recent years, adding features to its devices that make them more palatable to business," author Nick Wingfield wrote.

Previously, under Jobs, corporate customers were often rubbed the wrong way as the outspoken CEO spoke his mind, former employees reportedly said. But even before he took over as CEO, Cook, while chief operating officer of Apple, was said to engage in more communication with the company's enterprise clients.

"(Cook) met more frequently with corporate customers and seemed to appreciate their needs, even if he did not deviate from Mr. Jobs's views about making consumers the priority when making Apple products," the report said.

Apple's new success in the enterprise has been largely driven by the iPhone and iPad, which have seen rapid adoption thanks in part to the "consumerization" of businesses. During each of its latest quarterly earnings conference calls, Apple executives have touted the adoption of iOS devices in the enterprise, and noted last quarter that 93 percent of Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing the iPhone, while 90 percent are deploying or testing the iPad.

One major corporate coup for Apple came in September, when home improvement retailer Lowe's revealed it would outfit 42,000 of its employees with iPhone 4 units, equipped with custom applications to make the handset a point-of-sale system.

A poll of enterprise device activations in October found that both the iPhone and iPad were top picks by companies, easily besting competing Android products. The iPad in particular showed complete domination of the enterprise tablet market, taking 96 percent of total activations tracked by Good Technology.

Even the Mac has found success in enterprise adoption following years of struggles. Forrester Research, a longtime critic of Mac use for businesses, declared in October that it was "time to repeal prohibition" on Macs in the enterprise, stating that Mac business users are more productive than their PC counterparts thanks to increased reliability and less maintenance necessary with Apple devices.

81 Comments

blastdoor 16 Years · 3809 comments

I have long believed/hoped that apple would go after enterprise customers more aggressively once Jobs was no longer CEO.

I just hope they work to get macs into businesses, not just idevices. If apple made even a modest, minimal effort I suspect they could grab 10% of the corporate PC market for the Mac. And if they were to make an enthusiastic effort thy might be able to eventually double that.

The return on money spent doing this would be better than the return they are getting on treasury bonds, that's for sure. And they would be making the world a better place by aiding all of the poor souls who are forced to use PCs at work.

phone-ui-guy 19 Years · 1018 comments

Apple has been focussed on the Enterprise for years now. Just because they don't advertise it doesn't mean they have not been hard at work. Their enterprise reps would reach out from time to time to find out how things were going and looking for areas they could improve. I work for an enterprise that has over 60,000 employees worldwide and we get a choice between Mac Book Pros and Lenovo. Any meeting you go to now has at least half of the people there with Macs. At some point in the very near future I suspect IT will flip the community support model from the Mac to the PC and just support the Macs. Engineering was stuck on PCs the longest because of tools, but so many tools are now available there is no reason to stay on the Windows. If someone needs to run Windows exclusively, I still tell them to get the Mac Book Pro and just load Windows with boot camp and ditch Mac OS X. The Apple hardware is certainly nicer than the Lenovos.

bloggerblog 17 Years · 2594 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phone-UI-Guy

Apple has been focussed on the Enterprise for years now. Just because they don't advertise it doesn't mean they have not been hard at work. Their enterprise reps would reach out from time to time to find out how things were going and looking for areas they could improve. I work for an enterprise that has over 60,000 employees worldwide and we get a choice between Mac Book Pros and Lenovo. Any meeting you go to now has at least half of the people there with Macs. At some point in the very near future I suspect IT will flip the community support model from the Mac to the PC and just support the Macs. Engineering was stuck on PCs the longest because of tools, but so many tools are now available there is no reason to stay on the Windows. If someone needs to run Windows exclusively, I still tell them to get the Mac Book Pro and just load Windows with boot camp and ditch Mac OS X. The Apple hardware is certainly nicer than the Lenovos.

That's of course nonsense, Apple has proved to us over and over again to not give a rat's ass about enterprise or small business. Nothing, nada, zilch!

conradjoe 14 Years · 1887 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Chief Apple's recent success in the enterprise comes as ... Executive Tim Cook has shown a friendlier side than companies were used to with Steve Jobs.


If Cook wants to make any significant inroads in to the enterprise, he'd be better off spending his time making enterprise-class machines, and less time being "friendly".See? It's easy!

mactac 14 Years · 316 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastdoor

I just hope they work to get macs into businesses, not just idevices. If apple made even a modest, minimal effort I suspect they could grab 10% of the corporate PC market for the Mac. And if they were to make an enthusiastic effort thy might be able to eventually double that.

Apple will have to fill the gap in the desktop line up if it wants more Macs in business. Many companies won't touch an all in one. The mini no longer has something as basic as an optical drive. Businesses that still use optical media aren't going to want a add a bunch of external drives just to get a basic necessity.

If your client wants an a copy of data they can file away a thumb drive isn't an elegant substitute.