Apple is at ‘inflection point’ of rapid enterprise adoption

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Blue chip analysts seem finally to be catching on to the arguments some of us have been making for over a decade, as Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers tells clients Apple could be at an “inflection point” for enterprise market share.

Apple has reached an inflection point for enterprise adoption

He’s right, of course, but the truth of this matter is that Apple has been riding through this point for a while. Think about that IDC data claiming 23% of US enterprise PCs last year were Macs. Think about Jamf CEO Dean Hager’s passionately and accurately held belief that Apple’s platforms will  be the No. 1 device ecosystem in the enterprise within a few years.

That’s the state of play.

Rakers seems to agree.

He points to the old model of Mac, in which Apple’s machines would be inside the creative departments and software development houses, but notes Mac’s growing enterprise market share.

“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.

What’s driving this enterprise renaissance?

What’s driving this enterprise renaissance? Rakers reckons it’s a rule of three:

1. The amazing M-series chips.
2. The emergence of as a service offerings, such as Apple Business Essentials, but also, might I add, Jamf, Addigy, SAP, Cisco, IBM and all the other enterprise firms who have become evangelist about Apple’s platforms.
3. The impact of employee choice, where given a choice most employees will select a Mac.

What he says confirms what we know: The move to Mac boosts productivity, as IBM, SAP and everyone else I’ve spoken with in the last 23 years has told me.

[Also read: Orange Business Services becomes Apple Enterprise Reseller]

Consider this recent Jamf data concerning enterprise adoption of Apple’s solutions:

• 9 of the 10 largest companies, as ranked by Fortune 500
• 22 of the 25 most valuable brands, according to Forbes
• 10 of the 10 largest U.S. banks, according to Bankrate.com
• 10 of the top 10 global universities, according to U.S. News & World Report
• 8 of the top 10 technology companies.

Apple’s M-series Mac range continues to expand

Rakers says:

“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.”

The year of transformation has begun

What this means in sales terms is hard to enumerate, but he reckons up to 60 million Macs could already be in use across the enterprise of c. 140 million he says are in use generally.

He also notes that Wells Fargo’s Stack Overflow 21 survey found that 30% of people already use Mac as their primary OS, even though Apple has just 9% of the market.

So, what are all those PCs being used for exactly?

This is the year when we see the industry transform.

This is also the year Apple builds on its advantage with the first M2 Macs.

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