Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers says that Apple could be at an inflection point at which the enterprise market adopts the Mac in a big way.
“While Apple’s Mac revenue only accounts for about 10% of total revenue, we have seen Apple become increasingly vocal about the adoption of Macs in the enterprise space,” Rakers said.
Wells Fargo analysts identified three different drivers for this adoption: Apple’s ability to leverage the proliferation of its M1-series processors, which it developed internally; the expanding adoption of as-a-service offerings like Apple Business Essentials; and work demographics expanding support for giving employees the option to choose their devices.
Apple’s M1-, M1 Pro-, and M1 Max-powered Macs have already stunned observers with their massive leap in performance and efficiency.
“When this productivity increase is scaled across a large enterprise/organization with hundreds of developers, the savings could justify upgrading entire fleets of Macs, perhaps sooner than dictated by the typical three-to-four-year upgrade cycle,” Raker said.
Wells Fargo estimates that the Mac installed base could be more than 140 million today, including between 55 million and 60 million commercial Macs accounting for about 40% of that total.
MacDailyNews Take: Quality, reliability, and value win out in the end.
The cream rises to the top – even in the enterprise – where smart companies have already upgraded to Macs.
Told ya so, long, long ago:
“As we have always said, even as many short-sightedly waved (and continue to wave) the white flag, the war is not over. And, yes, we shall prevail… No company is invincible. Not even Microsoft.” — MacDailyNews, January 10, 2005
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I’ve been saying this for the last 30 years. Apple may be the world’s largest company, but they have no clue how businesses run. This is an example of why I’m not a fan of irony. They provide little or no support for the small business market or large enterprise for that matter. The minor success they’ve achieved in business so far, rest precariously on whether or not Microsoft might one day decide to discontinue Office for Macintosh.
Their “services” are targeted specifically at consumers and cannot even begin to compete with real cloud service companies. At best Apple competes with the old shoebox under the bed with all the old snapshots in it.
After gutting MacOS Server and leaving us with nothing except a barely functional file server, I’ve had to move to Linux and Windows in the computer room.
Apple could easily replace Google services for small businesses. First they could roll FileMaker back into the fold and stop treating it like a red headed stepchild. Countless small businesses run on FileMaker. Allow FileMaker solutions to be sold on the App Store.
They could create clear, manageable file sharing. They could provide calendar services, CRM, THEY COULD &^*#king GET WITH HP AND FIX ALL THESE STUPID BROKEN PRINTER DRIVERS AND CRAP. They could update Apple Remote Desktop for a change. They could create a small business, business development and support group and put me in charge.
They need to face the fact that Safari is a piece of shit now. Everyone is on fricking Chrome. This needs to be addressed.
But no. Apple is only interested in happy happy joy joy kooks dancing the streets. The business world is just waiting to be conquered.
Thelonious: Damn, you’re good!
Thelonius Mac has got it exactly right. As a user of Apple computers since the II-E, Lisa and 1984 Mac, and a long-time stockholder, I’ve watched Apple falter time after time after time when it comes to designing for, selling to, supporting and in general understanding the needs of the enterprise. When Jobs was still alive, he was reported to “hate corporate IT guys” and this bias seems to be baked into Apple. It is such a shame since they have so many innate advantages, although as Marvin has detailed, they have steadily pissed them away for decades now. I wish I could be more optimistic but they have failed to understand or apparently care about so many fundamental needs of the enterprise–perhaps most notably the ability to simply interface with corporate decision makers in the IT space–that it is difficult to see Apple penetrating this huge market. Hope springs eternal however, and perhaps they will build a division or group of skilled professionals who can change this awful situation.
It is NOT in Apple’s DNA to offer products or services to Businesses, some examples are already cited by theloniousmac and LownoteNB, but additionally there is a risk of a even worse scenario: that in order to serve the enterprise market, Apple may change some things that as consumers we appreciate, such as the relevance that design has, even the name of the products, so instead of “MacBook Air” we might have “Apple QRST234 version 2” or not moving as fast in adopting stuff like Thunderbolt.
So Apple is a consumer oriented company
For a while right after the turn of the century it looked like Apple might actually, really support medium to large enterprises. Hell, Virginia Tech even built the third fastest computer on the planet using just Macs. Going back before that (before the dark days) there were enterprises that were predominantly Mac such as certain NASA labs and DOE labs.
However, as mentioned by others, Apple has either failed to update or outright killed things that medium to large enterprises were either considering or actually using. One niche case in point is the Airport wireless routers. Per the vast majority of users it was THE most stable wireless router out there. I know of a few IT managers in medium to large enterprises that would absolutely not allow any other Apple equipment in their shops, but loved the Airports. A couple even told me they’d replace it if an only if it died or became technologically extinct. Then Apple did not update it. It was stuck at 802.11ac with no updates or patches while the world moved beyond it. I’d be shocked if even 5% of the initial installations were still a
ctive.
And it’s not the maligned “Apple Tax” about which people complain that deters medium to large enterprises. Yes, the maxed out Mac Pro can cost over $55,000, but a full blown Dell workstation can cost over $250,000. (You read that right.) The difference is that Dell will go into those medium to large enterprises and provide front end and back end hardware (and a large fraction of the items to go in between) plus the software and services to make it all run (even though much of the time the systems run poorly or are very brittle.
Could Apple actively support medium to large enterprises? Absolutely. Is it likely they ever will again? I’d give it a one in a billion chance of becoming reality.
Business includes smartphones. Apple can sell a vertically integrated deployment. of devices for business. The usability and especially the internal admin support becomes significantly easier. IMHO odd they don’t try to sell business the full enchilada.
All the points above are valid. I would add, another part of this problem is that most enterprise IT managers do not want Apple products and services in their world. The reasons vary, but in many cases, they just don’t know anything about Apple other than iPhone, so they have an outdated perception that Apple products are not for businesses and would be difficult to manage…or in some cases, they’ve realized that it would be so easy to manage that they could lose headcount. This legacy perception is hard to change with 15-20 year It veterans who are in positions to control budget and decision making. I’ve been battling this at my company for a long time. It would be great if Apple could do more to change this perception in enterprise.
The subtext of Bloomberg’s click bait article is that it wants Apple to make Dell-style Macs for POS and data entry in order to force Apple to join the low profit rat race and weaken its intellectual, aesthetic, and reputation standing.
Macs and their app ecosystem of software are still way too curated for the majority of the world. Apple we support PPC, Now we are supporting Intel. Now we are supporting Apples ARM SoCs. Apple really has a distorted view of itself. Apple customers are in Apples ride of life, its only a matter of time, or more like another 3 – 4 years when Apple will officially drop x86 support for all of their Macs.
At least with Windows you get a plethora of hardware to chose from. Windows users can run Windows on x86 or ARM SoCs. You can even run Windows on a Raspberry Pi for crying out loud. Even Chromebooks have 2 in 1 laptops, and run on a plethora of hardware types. Apple has a history of dropping hardware, and only supporting what Apple wants. Where is Apples support for other IoT devices, or SBC again? That’s right NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!
Plus there isn’t one Mac that has a touch screen today. Not one 2 in 1 Macbook. With Apple, you are pushed into buying what Apple wants you to purchase. Most business don’t want that, or need that.