“Yesterday, news broke that Apple was able to steal a Hewlett-Packard executive to run its British Isles channel, and there are continued rumblings that Apple is looking for star power in a person to run its global channel program,” Larry Walsh reports for Channelnomics.
“The Register reported yesterday that Apple appointed Trevor Evans, a HP Personal Systems Group channel sales director, to run its nascent channel efforts in the United Kingdom and Ireland,” Walsh reports. “Evans, a well-known HP channel leader on the other side of the pond, was on leave when his resignation came. He’s expected to start at Apple in January.”
“On this side of the pond, Apple is continuing its methodical search for a channel executive star to build and run its global business channel program,” Walsh reports. “From what channel chiefs tell Channelnomics, the person Apple is looking for is not just someone who can build a channel program, but lend immediate credibility to Apple’s channel efforts and ambitions.”
Walsh reports, “The entry of Apple in the channel shouldn’t come as a surprise. Businesses have steadily increased adoption and support of Apple products as users demand Macs, iPhones and, increasingly, iPads, in the workplace. Many major vendors, such as Juniper Networks and Intel, have long offered employees the option of a Mac or Windows PC. Apple has always serviced the business market, even if it only wants to talk about consumer sales.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
wtf is “channel”?…sales outlets?
what’s a channel? Seriously, im lost!
Channels = sales via partnerships (added value resellers) where the end customer’s relationship is owned by the channel and not Apple.
The art of writing is allowing your audience the ability to comprehend your words. (Spencer, Tracy)
“reports for Channelnomics”
He wasn’t writing for MDN readers. MDN should have added that part to their story themselves..
In other words, acted as a value added (Channel) publisher. 🙂
Apple’s brief for some time has been to destroy the channel. They regard their channel partners as fair game and actively seek to divert their sales to the Apple store online and on the ground. Apple demands that service clients’ email addresses are entered into the service database and then canvasses these clients with special offers through the apple store that cannot be matched by channel resellers. They have discontinued and recalled packaged software and thereby diverted all software sales to themselves directly. They restrict supply of ipads and iphones to the channel using all manner of bogus requirements. Apple’s products are by and large great. The company, however is venal, malicious, litigious and greedy beyond belief. They seem to be run by a dire combination of marketing and bean counting people who wouldn’t know an enduser from a lamppost and who talk in terms of individual units of sale. Here’s to the crazy ones grabbed everyone as an inspiring mission statement. To the prevailing management it’s just another marketing slogan to sucker in the punters. The most common statement about Apple that we hear from clients over and over again is “love the products, hate the company!”
And why do you think that is quasimodo? For years getting Apple products through any kind of ‘partnership’ was an abysmal experience. Sears? what a joke. Best Buy? Whatever. CompUSA? things in the Apple section were neglected so badly by the staff that Apple had to place Apple employees in the Apple Corner.
The ‘Holy Sacred Channel’ treated Apple worse than the aborted red-headed bastard step kid. Apple crafted their own retail outlets to show off their products the way they should be, coupled with a knowledgable staff who could answer your questions.
Apple owes nothing to negligent channel partners. Wanting, no, demanding that your products are well displayed, maintained, and operational is not being venal, malicious, and greedy beyond belief. Go back to your bridge
The channel is not and never has been one channel. There is a clear division between the large box-pushers, who know nothing and care less and the smaller dedicated specialists who know their customers and their stuff and in many cases provide service of a quality far in excess of the somewhat hit and miss approach of staff at the Apple stores. Apple actively courts the large box pushers because they can bulk dump through them. They impose a sort of standard on the large chains and a sort of training but, in reality it’s just lip service. It’s the others that Apple is trying to eliminate. The ones that actually care about the clients and about their products.
It would seem logical that Apple would go after corporate sales. Perhaps they are trying to reinvent that too.
Bad idea!