“Now that reports show the Mac gaining market share, reporters and analysts alike are wondering when Apple CEO Steve Jobs will go after the corporate market,” Tim Beyers writes for The Motley Fool.
“Apple can, and I believe will, win in the boardroom. It merely needs an insurrection — an uprising that pulls its consumer technology into the enterprise market,” Beyers writes.
“We know such radical shifts are possible. Consider Research In Motion’s BlackBerry. From 1999 to 2004, it was mostly a cool gadget that users brought to work. IT managers dealt with the intrusion, and since that time, RIM’s subscriber base has grown from 2 million to more than 14 million,” Beyers writes. “Or think of Firefox. Devoted consumers have downloaded the browser by the millions in a rebellion against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The result? Big firms such as IBM have told their IT teams to figure out how to accommodate the upstart.”
“So with history as our guide, it follows that if Apple really wants to win the corporate market, it needs to keep winning consumers. And those consumers, in turn, have to sway IT managers to make room for their gear. Gear like, you know, the iPhone,” Beyers writes.
“Here’s the good news for investors: Jobs already knows the pattern, and he’s arming consumers to take the fight to their IT departments,” Beyers writes.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill C.” for the heads up.]
We agree. iPhone 2.0 will push Macs into the enterprise; in fact, the awakening has already begun with iPhone 1.0. We believe Macs will continue to infiltrate and liberate businesses at an ever-increasing rate for the foreseeable future. And, with the number of people having Macs at home also increasing, the demand for Macs at work will be coming from more and more frustrated employees demanding change. Likewise, as more and more Mac show up at work, those with Dells, HP, etc. at home will see what they are missing and switch to Mac. And so, the whole thing snowballs because, as we all know, “Once You Go Mac, You Never Go Back.”
MacDailyNews Note: By the way, Apple Inc. is a very large company, with approximately 21,600 full-time employees plus an additional 2,100 temporary employees located in offices all around the world, and they all use Macs. Macs can not only exist in business, but they can run large businesses. Here are a couple of other examples: Japan’s Aozora Bank dumps 2,300 Windows PCs for Apple Macs – April 03, 2006, Largest automobile processing company in North America dumps Windows PCs for Apple Macs – July 16, 2007
yihaa 1 ?
It’s fortunate for most companies that this is happening (I work for HP so I doubt I’ll see it here).
It’s actually the exact opposite of the cause for the PC’s dominance. I remember in the 80’s the driving force for choosing the then technologically inferior PC over the Amiga, Atari ST, and Macintosh, was the fact that the PC is what the big businesses were using. The market’s changed so much that this can occur, but realistically for most businesses it will take a demonstration of how time is saved by using a mac, to get past the fact that they don’t really need a system with the bells and whistles of a mac.
While the author is right about businesses not wanting to change cause its work…. That is what makes growing businesses vs closing businesses.
Companies that do not want to change, do not want to continue in business.
period.
en
Mac moving PCs out of small and medium sized Enterprises is already underway. I do consulting for a Software development Company (they only do Windows software). One Engineer was tired of Windows and needed a new laptop, he bought a Macbook Pro. Half the engineers have iPhones and now 5 of the engineers are swapping their Windows Laptops for Macbooks or Macbook Pros.
The IT guy and the CEO were a bit on the negative side to start with, but, with increased productivity and happy employees it kind of hard to be against it. The IT guy and CEO both have iPhones now and the CEO’s new laptop (according to the It guy) will be a Macbook Air when it arrives in a few days.
With all the Macs that are springing up around this Windows (only) Software company you might think that a swift change or supported platform extension would take place. Well, not so fast at change, programmers even if they are working on a Mac are still sacred of coding for the Mac. Now that they have Macs they have all started learning XCode and Objective C. Will the company expand their support to MacOS X. I think in the end that their customers will force them into supporting the Mac.
“Big firms such as IBM have told their IT teams to figure out how to accommodate the upstart.”
That doesn’t sound like the IT department at anyplace I’ve ever worked. In my experience, telling the IT department you wanted to use anything that wasn’t Microsoft simply got you a look that could kill.
“Apple CEO Steve Jobs arming customers . . .”
With weapons designed by P.A. Semi? Aha.
Yes, let’s remove the sh from the IT Department…..
This guy is blatantly wrong when he says Macs aren’t interoperable and don’t adhere to standards. MDN, how did you let that slide!?
“Raise your hand if you think Apple’s products are great because (a) they’re really interoperable and (b) they strictly adhere to standards. I didn’t think so.”
Yeah right, like Office documents, MS Publisher, Exchange and Internet Explorer. MS maintains its monopoly by creating a proprietary format, locking it from developers/competitors then convincing journalists that it is the ‘standard’.
Sorry, but that design is so 1980s. We’re not going back to that world again.
From the Article: Corporate customers only embrace new technology when they must.
Why are corporate customers embracing Mac & Linux now? One word: Panorama! Err… I mean… Vista!
“An obsession with control has led to an obsession with “standards.” All software is built from these cookbooks of code — even the underpinnings of the Web — because adherence to common principles preserves compatibility between software and systems, allowing data to be shared and business to get done.
Raise your hand if you think Apple’s products are great because (a) they’re really interoperable and (b) they strictly adhere to standards. I didn’t think so.”
I have to take objection to this in the writers analysis, as the Only “Standard” Microsoft is obsessed with is it’s own. This not and never as a company for open standards. The internet is not based on a Microsoft standard, no matter how much MS wishes it was. Which brings up the interoperability issue, IE is not a standards compliant browser, Safari on the other hand is. MacOS X is based on standards, from Apache HTTPd, to the BSD stack to open SSL. The Mac OS was also communicating with mainframes and other macs on the Internet before Microsoft knew what the internet was.
Microsoft does even strictly follow it’s own standards as Office doesn’t even fully support it’s OOXML standard, interestingly enough Apple’s iWork does and OOXML documents created in MS Office are more likely to be displayed correctly in iWork then in MS Office.
So to the author @ the FOOL – I pity the fool for making a fool of himself.
Because Apple is strict standards compliant while MS makes up it’s own standards. IT departments aren’t standards obsesses they are Windows i.e. Microsoft obsesses, after all they have big money invested in Microsoft Certifications.
Solaris is strictly standards based why it’s IT departments clamoring to deploy Solaris through the enterprise? Because the standard is an open standard and not MS closed make it up as they go standard. Embrace and extend is Microsoft’s internal moto and what it means is they will embrace an open standard and then extend it to the point that it becomes a Microsoft proprietary standard.
I pity the Fool for letting Fools dribble foolish incorrect dreck.
@Jay-Z
Yeah, that’s a very old rap on Apple. Certainly not true anymore. On the other hand, MS still refuses to play nice with standards.
Q: How many Microsoft software engineers does it take to change a light bulb.
A: None. They just declare “Dark” the new standard.
MS succeeded in locking users and create monopoly not with Windows, as most people think, but with Visual Studio. Most people programming strictly for Windows ware and not from some common platform stands like Firefox or Safari use VS. VS creates new Windows software, and you need Windows to run the Windows-only s/w, and then you need VS to build on the Windows s/w, and so it goes on…
If people just stop buying and using PCs unless they absolutely must run VS, then they soon realize 90% of computer technology needs can be done w/o any MS s/w at all. Then the IT shift will begin.
How sad if the IT boys drowned when the Apple tsunami washes over them.
Just last night I sent an email to nba.com because their video player only runs on Windows Media Player. I have Flip4Mac and it still won’t work. It is probably the only website where I have problems consistently.
I told them they need to fire their IT department and get someone who knows what the hell they are doing. If they are doing as poorly as they are now what will happen when almost everyone is viewing the web from a mobile device? They are missing out on lot of potential revenues and frustrating their fans for no good reason.
The NBA: where lousy IT happens.
I hate to be so pessimistic about this enterprise push. I really believe Apple is a much better solution and safer than Windows. I say this simply because I’ve gone to battle on this so many times with companies. MS has a stranglehold in this market. Their monopoly established in the OS, allows them to further extend its stranglehold with software specifically tied in to the OS or given unfair advantages over the competition. It would take a bold and visionary type of CIO/IT management to move beyond MS. But the basic policies of most IT in companies is not to look into innovative initiatives. They mostly follow the standard or follow the established regime ( monopoly locked MS standard ) and follow what others have done.
Someone should tell Mr. Beyers that compatibility and conforming to open standards, along with cutting edge innovation, are the major reasons for the success of Apple’s products. While casting Apple as some insurgent and disrupted company makes for catchy posting, it is true only as regards Apple’s pursuit of innovation and excellence. Along with innovation and excellence, Apple makes the most compatible computers on the market. You need only examine what’s in Mac OS X and OS X Server to discover all of the open standards and software that is in OS X. Indeed, OS X itself is based on standard BSD Unix and has full certification as conforming to the UNIX standard, which is why you can easily port any Unix or Linux application to OS X. And now, with Intel’s chips inside, Macs and Xserve can run Windows, Linux, Unix, and other X86 operating systems. And Macs have all the standard ports.
So among the pillars of the Macs greateness–innovation, excellence, superior quality of construction and components, innovation and excellence in aesthetic and functional design of hardware and software, excellence in operational management, excellent strategic management, a great sense of taste, deciding that it is better to side with your customers than with big media, and vision regarding its products and the technology industry–you will also find compatibility and support for open standards.
Apple should surpass RIM for market share by the end of Apples first quarter of fy2010 ending January ???…I forget the date.
@Wilt,
I’m not sure what you are jabbering about. NBA.com video works fine for me. I am also using Flip4Mac, and Safari on a 4-yr old AluPB with 867Ghz and Leopard.
I could ask the same of Steve Jobs. As much as you want to claim that the Mac works fine on a Windows network, “That dog don’t hunt!” I get so tired of asking my Microsoft certified IT guy for the IP address numbers for a printer or copier on the network when they just use plain names. Where’s Bonjour? It definitely needs some more tweaking before our IT guys will accept us Macintosh upstarts, who they only consider to be cool-aide drinking fanatics.
The single biggest factor that should influence companies to switch to Mac is ” total cost of ownership”. Buy some Macs and cut your IT department down to near zero. Not to mention the costs of anti-virus software and other Windows malware problems.
Years ago companies bought IBM products based on the ld adage that ” no one gets fired for buying IBM “, which implied that even if their products weren’t the best, IBM was a safe play.
Buying Microsoft is NOT a safe play.
@ 84 Mac Guy:
Some of us “IT guys” ARE Mac users.
Just look at the latest of four Apple XSANs in our environment…
Completely stealthy in our takeover.
Completely putting the Wintel world to shame – one Mac/server at a time.
Count on it.
@KenC
You’re luckier than I am. I cannot get the NBA web video to work at all. I watch videos on ESPN, SI, Fox and other sports related sites but NBA just ain’t cutting it for me. I’ve read all their info, emailed them and no luck.
I would think the NBA would want to cater to Mac users since we buy 66% of computer priced $1000 or more. We are the high end users they should covet, who can actually afford to go to an NBA game.
I am glad your experience has been a good one; mine has sucked. I would buy NBA video because I am a big fan (GO LAKERS!) but my experience so far has been nothing but discouraging.
But Apple is DYING!!
ha ha fooled you…
But in reality, if Apple wants the enterprise market then Apple needs to go after it. Reinforcing the home consumer base is an obvious first step, but I’m weary of being on the enterprise front line for Apple with absolutely no direct compensation. Apple needs to think through and begin developing an enterprise market place for itself – And now would be good.