“There was a time when spotting an Apple product in the average corporate workplace was only slightly easier than catching a glimpse of a unicorn,” Nick Wingfield reports for The New York Times. “Now comes a report saying that Apple will most likely be the main reason the corporate computer hardware market will show any growth at all this year.”

“In a broad report on global information technology spending that it plans to publish on Monday, Forrester Research estimates that government and business purchases of computers will grow a meager 1.7 percent, to $146.6 billion, in 2012 from the year before,” Wingfield reports. “Forrester includes tablet computers like the iPad in its forecast; sales of iPads to businesses are booming. Forrester estimates that business spending on iPads will rise 76 percent to nearly $10 billion this year.”

Wingfield reports, “That growth, along with a 9 percent increase in business spending on Macs to $6.7 billion, will help offset what Forrester expects to be a dismal year for PCs and tablets that run Windows.”

Read more in the full article here.