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August 26, 2008

business

Forrester report sees enterprise Mac adoption quadruple

Posted Aug. 26, ’08, 12:59 PM PT by David Dahlquist
Category | Business

forrestergray.pngWhile PCs have traditionally reigned supreme in the enterprise market, the Mac is steadily gaining a foothold in the corporate world—without even trying!

Benjamin Gray of Forrester Research reports that Mac adoption among business users has not doubled, not tripled, but has quadrupled since 2006. That’s “epic win x 4”, for the mathematically challenged.

While the Mac was stuck with a measly 1.1% of business market share in October 2006, their share shot up to 3.6% a year later, and settled in at 4.5% in June 2007.

Such impressive growth in the enterprise market is especially significant when you consider that Apple doesn’t even have an enterprise strategy. Their focus has been to build great computers and, as the saying goes, if you build it they will come. And they have.

The data can be found in the recently published, informatively titled Forrester Research report, “Corporate Desktop Operating System Trends, Q4 2007 Through Q2 2008: Windows Vista Deployments Are Finally Ramping Up, While Mac Continues Its Slow March On The Enterprise”. Now say that ten times fast.

So what’s the cause of Mac’s sudden quadrupalage of enterprise market share? Gray attributes it to the overwhelming success of the iPod. As he explains it, “Strong iPod branding and sales have led to greater consumer sales of Apple PCs; in turn, this has lured enthusiasts and small workgroups with supple IT departments beyond the standard domain of design and media.”

So if the iPod had this big of an effect on Apple’s enterprise share, what will the iPhone do for it? Joe Wilcox at Apple Watch thinks the iPhone will do even greater things for Apple’s enterprise market share. After all, the iPhone has a legitimate place in the enterprise landscape, and as businesses buy into the appeal of the iPhone, they will inevitably give in to the unstoppable charm of the Mac. I, for one, am anxious to see the next lengthily-titled Forrester Report on the matter.


2 Comments

Dave-O said:

We had a large concurrent departure from my company (read: exodus). To a man, they all got Macs in their new jobs (where--for a change--they have a choice). I don't think it has so much to do with inherent problems with Windows so much as our IT department. Our default image is so bloated you can barely get work done. The number of processes that will step in and consume 100% of the CPU is stunning. And the battery life is abysmal. Hopefully Apple will step up efforts to train administrators not to bog down machines with administrative overhead.

Some people get machines to do work, we get machines to run virus scan and network admin tools. Work is clearly a secondary function.

August 26, 2008 3:40 PM
Mac+ said:

And when it comes to the ERP side, I think it's a shame that Apple uses SAP system, when there's a world (in fact: HansaWorld) of a ERP/CRM/BPM/BI -and all other acronyms- native for Mac, for over 20 years. We've moved (our company in Europe) last year from a heavy ERP to this cross platform and agile Hansa ERP/CRM software. And it's absolutely great running on iMac and Mac Pro, backed by Xserve. And for CFO guys this is also interesting: TCOwnership has nothing to do with Windows side. True: Apple does not have (yet) a strategy for corporates, though they should; letting the iPod/iPhone doing the work alone, it's going to take 'ages', and some IT people just don't want to realize that 'switching' is no rocket science in most cases, neither a super sized cost if compared to a clean system vs. a troubled one. The era of 'Apple niches' is over, Corporate is now the place.

September 10, 2008 4:45 PM

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