Is Apple an enterprise software or hardware company? That's the question Gartner's Nick Jones asks, ultimately answering with "you have to have a pretty relaxed definition [of enterprise] before Apple fits it."
"Enterprise" is defined by the company you keep.
With this definition in mind, Apple clearly fits the "enterprise" moniker, whether Apple wants it or not. As BusinessWeek reported back in 2008, the Mac is finding its way into enterprise computing, with or without the IT department's blessing. Ditto the iPhone.
Is it somehow less enterprise because the CIO didn't issue a policy giving permission?
Maybe "enterprise" means something more than "gets used a lot within the enterprise." In fact, Jones points out a few reasons he, personally, doesn't feel Apple is an enterprise vendor:
Apple does the bare minimum for enterprises, they aren't deeply committed to security, management, road maps, low TCO and so on. And they don't open up the architecture of iPhone enough for third parties to fill the holes.
But, again, is this really how we should define "enterprise?"
It reminds me of the criticisms leveled at open-source software early in its adoption. Originally Linux, for example, wasn't considered "enterprise grade" or "enterprise ready," presumably because it didn't meet Jones' hurdles above.
Now, however, Linux is considered an essential enterprise technology. What changed? Nothing...except adoption.
Here's a test for Jones: while Gartner pooh-poohs Apple's iPhone as an enterprise mobile device, perhaps for a variety of good definitional reasons, will it hold to such a rationale once the iPhone's market share within the enterprise dwarfs that of Windows Mobile, which has lost a third of its market share since 2008?
Seriously, at some point it won't be enough to listen to Microsoft's Ray Ozzie deprecate the iPhone's enterprise credentials because its 100,000-plus applications are "not very deep" and lack the "thousands of man years" that have gone into the applications that run on Windows. It won't make sense. Why? Because no matter how "enterprise grade" those Windows Mobile applications are, few within the enterprise are using them.
Enterprise is as enterprise does. Would you rather work for the company that builds software for the enterprise, or would you prefer to work for the company whose software gets used by the enterprise?
If you can have both, great. But it's silly to say Apple isn't an enterprise company simply because it sells to the enterprise without even trying.
Apple's Macs, such as the MacBook Air, continue to sell well in the U.S. market.
(Credit: CNET)Apple's Mac business outgrew the overall PC market in the U.S. by a significant margin in the first quarter, according to research from IDC and Gartner released Wednesday.
Check out my colleague Erica Ogg's post for the overall news, which has the PC market as a whole growing by 14.6 percent, but the U.S. market growing by just 3.5 percent. Despite that tepid growth in the U.S., Apple saw its U.S. shipments increase by a margin far greater than the market, as well as any other PC maker in the top 5.
According to Gartner, Mac shipments increased by 32.5 percent to U.S. customers. IDC didn't think Mac growth was quite that strong, pegging the increase at 25.1 percent. The numbers are different because the two companies count PC shipments in slightly different ways, but it really doesn't matter: Apple had a good quarter. Dell was the only other company to post double-digit growth in the U.S., according to both market research companies, with about 15.6 percent growth in the first quarter.
Gartner says that Apple appears to have shown "decent growth" within the professional PC market, which is a little outside of its usual haunts. Apple now has 6.6 percent of the overall U.S. market, according to Gartner, while IDC says Apple's at 6 percent market share. The two firms only release the top 5 in each region at first, and Apple is still pretty far away from cracking the worldwide Top 5.
Apple reports its quarterly earnings next week, and while there have been concerns about the iPod and iPhone businesses heading into that report, any concern about Mac sales can be safely laid to rest.
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