“Apple’s iPad event on Thursday will refresh the product line, bolster the company’s holiday shipments and move the tablet more into the enterprise arena,” Larry Dignan writes for ZDNet. “That latter point may be the most critical for Apple in the long run.”
“Aside from the usual product cycle implications for the Apple, I’m betting that over time the iPad will be seen as a more of an enterprise device than a personal one,” Dignan writes. “Apple’s iPhone has a lot of business traction, but the iPad is close behind and has a better shot than the Mac ever will in the enterprise.”
Dignan writes, “The tablet market is going to be dominated by cheap almost throwaway devices, but Apple can preserve margins with a corporate spin.”
Read more in the full article here.
This is a story that we have all heard before – the will become a low-cost commodity and relegate Apple’s product offerings to a small, niche status. The only way to maintain profitability is to jump in bed with the enterprise market.
This story has been applied to Macs, iPods, iPhones, iPads, etc. But these people fail to understand that a high-quality, well-designed product focused on providing the best possible consumer experience will never become a mere commodity and initial purchase price the dominant factor.
Its like saying Mercs and BMWs are only bought by the Enterprise when in fact there are far more of the cheapest vehicles in their fleets.
The Mercury’s don’t cost as much the BMW’s. 😊
“Apple’s slate of business apps also work better on larger screens. Toss in Apple’s partnership with IBM and you have the makings of a corporate more than personal device.”
This is based on the premise that businesses will automatically change over to Apple and IBM’s offerings as pertains to the enterprise. It ignores the fact that the vast majority of business is still on Winblows and Microslut software, and has dug themselves into this hole so deeply, that it is almost impossible and not viable to get out. So you end up accessing your enterprise stuff through VPN, remote desktop, etc. Not natively.
But IBM has as deep of Windows enterprise roots as any company on the planet. They will have no trouble integrating iOS mobile with Windows Servers its IBM. (After all the alternative is Android-Windows which is an even more difficult problem for security and reliability across devices and versions.)
I would say Apple has mobile enterprise in the bag, and over the next ten years has a chance to tip office PC use over to Mac too. (At this point Apple isn’t aiming at servers at all.)
Truth is, much of what passes for “computer use” could just as easily or more easily be done on a tablet for a large part of enterprise use.
Most people only jot notes, take numbers, read emails and send a short “OK” & use iPad oriented Apps, which companies are putting out quickly, with the likes of FileMaker Pro being out their with their DB access by iPhones and iPads.
I think you are over simplify what happens in large corporations.
– Security or perception of security is critical to them all.
– Your activity list is true for admin and managers but there is large group of workers that have to use many applications some web based but not all internal and external. These workers often work on multiple requests across multiple applications.
– The best tablet out there (iPad) Safari sucks in corporations because the browser keeps running out of memory and it forces the browser to refresh which is a disaster for many web based applications.
Conclusion:
– The existing iPad satisfy the admin and executives.
– Apple needs to rethink the iPad for the rest:
* A larger screen and support ability to have multiple windows showing active applications
* STOP the browser refresh (or make it an option) so those who work on a web based app can turn it on at the cost of slower performance. Better still, Increase the RAM and provide better caching so all Apps can do better multi-tasking and stop Safari’s most PAINFUL behavior. otherwise, what was the point of going 64Bit? The key benefit of 64bit is for larger addressable memory. I DO HOPE THIS WAS IN APPLE PLANS in the first place.
There have been many predictions about Apple.
Most have been wrong.