Despite so many macroeconomic challenges, Apple’s enterprise growth story continues — and the company last week announced another sign that suggests that direction will continue.
What’s driving Apple’s growth story?
The biggest trends driving this growth are pretty well known. These include the consumption of IT, the shift to employee choice, Apple’s great success in consumer markets, and the company’s well-deserved reputation for security. product reliability and generally lower running costs.
These strong momentum engines generate their own energy, and this now appears to create another strong force for Apple in the enterprise.
This means that across all Apple categories, the company is now experiencing a significant increase in the number of customers picking up an Apple product for the first time.
Apple’s latest fiscal call resulted in several statements to that effect from company executives. Not only have iPhones attracted double-digit growth in the number of people switching from Android, but the Mac renaissance also appears to have begun.
Apple says more than half of Mac purchases were to first-time buyers, two-thirds of Apple Watch sales were to people who had never bought before, and more than 50% of iPad sales were to customers , who have never owned such tablets.
Where the Mac goes, the iPad will eventually follow
While iPad sales may have been a historically low point, the company is far from unique in this experience. IDC claims global tablet sales fell 8.8% year over year. IDC also says that Apple sold as many iPads in the third quarter of the year (which is Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter) as the next three biggest tablet companies combined: Apple, it says, sold 14.5 million iPads compared to Samsung (7.1 million), Amazon (4.3 million) and Lenovo (2.7 million).
This IDC data is somewhat confirmed by Strategic analysis, which tied Apple with 14.9 million iPad sales. The data shows more iPads sold than all tablets sold globally by the next four biggest vendors: Samsung (7.2 million), Amazon (3.7 million), Lenovo (2.7 million) and Huawei (1.3 million).
That half of all these Apple tablets are sold to people who have never owned an iPad before strongly suggests the strength of Apple’s grip on the thinking of the tablet industry.
With Mac sales reaching the highest peak in the company’s history and Apple’s continued work to unite the Mac and iPad as perfect productivity companions, the unwritten future sees today’s Mac-new customers investing in the iPad to to supplement their computer replacement for the next few years.
Sound foundations
These complementary waves of iPhone, Mac, iPad peaks are perfect opportunities for Apple management to build each successive wave on the success of the other. Just as record iPhone sales helped build record Mac sales, those PC sales should help drive iPad adoption in the next wave until the process repeats itself. All Apple needs to do is maintain customer satisfaction.
Today’s enterprise market mirrors the consumer market. While actual figures for Apple’s enterprise sales are hard to come by, most serious industry insiders I’ve spoken to in recent months seem inclined to believe that this share will rise to over 50% before it begins to break even. significant barriers.
At least one executive doesn’t seem to think there are many barriers to going even higher. Jamf CIO Linh Lam predicts that Apple will be the No. 1 enterprise vendor by 2030. That’s looking increasingly likely.
While the present is challenging, things can and will change
Meanwhile, Apple continues to benefit as employee selection schemes (a must as business leaders try to hire and retain experienced workers during the so-called Great Resignation) continue to favor Apple.
Counterpoint technology puts it this way. “Overall, Apple’s strong grip on its user base continues to act as a growth engine, while its ‘walled garden’ approach builds additional agility and attracts new users across the ecosystem.” Current macro headwinds remain a temporary headwind in the face of a longer-term growth supercycle as the company’s installed base continues to set new records.”
The trick is that Apple’s installed base tends to expand its investment in this ecosystem over time — and each new wave is a future upgrade cycle.
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Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3678312/apples-mac-renaissance-has-truly-begun.html
