“Apple Inc., without much effort on its part, is making rapid headway in selling to corporations,” Peter Burrows reports for Businessweek. “After years of being the also-ran to Microsoft Corp. in the workplace, Apple has seen its iPad become a standard business tool.”
More from Burrows:
According to an IDG Connect survey, 51 percent of managers with iPads say they “always” use the device at work, and another 40 percent sometimes do. Seventy-nine percent of the respondents use the iPad for business when outside the office.
iPad faces little competition among corporations such as financial services and pharmaceutical firms. Apple’s iPhone, meanwhile, is the top-selling smartphone, forcing businesses to accommodate workers who use it. That has helped set the stage for Apple’s Mac computer to make its own inroads in the corporate world.
Apple sold 3.8 million Macs to companies in the last fiscal year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That is 3 percent of the market.
Burrows says. “If Apple were to boost that to 18 million Macs a year, similar to the sales level of No. 3 PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd., it would bring in about $23 billion. Given workers’ desire to use Apple products, the company would probably be able to reach that point with far less investment than rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co. or Dell Inc.”
