Apple’s Mac business sales grew a huge 50.9 percent at the end of 2011. This easily outpaced Apple’s already impressive overall growth in Mac sales.
Neil Hughes for AppleInsider:
In a closer look at Mac sales, analyst Charlie Wolf with Needham & Company revealed in a note to investors on Monday that sales in the business market represented 20.5 percent of total Mac sales in the December quarter. But business sales accounted for 34.9 percent of year-over-year total shipment growth for the Mac platform.
Apple now represents 2.9 percent of total business PC sales worldwide, more than double its share of 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2010. But Apple’s presence in the enterprise is even greater in the U.S., hitting 5.8 percent in the December quarter, up from 3.1 percent in the first quarter of 2010.
Wolf says Apple has continuously added features to OS X to allow it to integrate seamlessly into the Microsoft network environment. A key step was the introduction of BootCamp by Apple, and virtualization software from VMWare and Parallels, allowing Intel-based Macs to run Windows. Microsoft has also made additions to Exchange to offer better Mac support.
“But these developments merely set the table,” Wolf said. “They did not provide a compelling reason for businesses to purchase Macs.”
He says the credit belongs to the iPhone and the iPad. By getting to be familiar with these two Apple devices, businesses have began looking more favorably at Apple.
Hughes writes: “Wolf has closely followed Mac sales in the enterprise for some time now, and declared last May that Apple’s huge inroads made in the business market have made the Mac’s presence in the corporate world a ‘durable platform’ for the company.”
Mac business sales stagnated between 2007 and 2009, but in 2010, the year the iPad debuted, the tide began to turn, and Apple has experienced two straight years of growth in the enterprise.
