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iPhone 'Halo' Driving Corporate iPad/Mac Adoption, 25% of Cisco-Owned Laptops Are MacBooks

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Apple is seeing increased success in selling its wares to large corporations thanks to the iPhone, reports The Wall Street Journal. A number of Apple products have acted as "halos" over the years, selling to first-time Apple owners and seeing that penetration lead to sales of more products.

The iPod helped drive Mac adoption with consumers, particularly amongst college students, but the iPhone is the most successful product in Apple's history and has driven tremendous amounts of Mac and iPad sales. One-quarter of Cisco's company-provided notebooks are Macs following that company's decision to allow employees to choose which platform they preferred.

Bechtel
Many companies are deploying custom applications for iPhones and iPads, with the iPhone often being Apple's first foothold in a business.

LG&E and KU Energy LLC, Kentucky's biggest electric utility ... approved the iPhone for employees in 2010. It then introduced iPads, and built apps such as one to help its helicopter patrollers survey 5,500 miles of high-voltage power lines. Using an iPad's global-positioning system, patrollers can pinpoint the location of a problem and select from a menu of common issues, such as a damaged pole or an overgrown tree.

"For years, we looked for some way to automate this and we heard all sorts of fairy tales, but we could never find anything," said Robby Trimble, LG&E and KU's manager of transmission-line services.

Now, the utility's engineers who run power plants use iPads to record how much electricity is generated. Warehouse managers use the tablet to scan bar codes and track the utility's tools and materials.

Forrester says Apple accounts for 8 percent of global business and government spending on computers and tablets -- that number does not include the iPhone -- and could rise to 11 percent by 2015.

Apple executives frequently mention enterprise adoption and custom app development in earnings release conference calls with analysts, touting large corporate adoptions of iOS devices and how companies are using internally developed apps. The company also has large websites profiling how businesses are using both the iPhone and iPad.

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Top Rated Comments

AngerDanger Avatar
AngerDanger
166 months ago
I can just imagine the two men in that photo playing Angry Birds.

MacRumors content image
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Jaro65 Avatar
Jaro65
166 months ago
1 company for every 5000 companies have a Mac install-base over 20%. Big deal.

Macs (like most business-class Wintels) are nice computers. Pricier, yes.

I'm not sure what the big advertisement is that Cisco has a 25% Mac user base. So what. I'm sure company X out there has a 25% linux base, too. And Company Y out there has a 25% Pepsi-drinking user base.

Talk to me when Macs hit a 25% install base in EITHER the consumer market or business market for a personal computer (not a tablet or a smartphone). As far as I can tell, for the past 30 years Apple peaked at 15% in either of those 2 markets...and that was in 2011 I believe.
So...how's the weather in Redmond?
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
D
dilbert99
166 months ago
When you quote the ENTIRE post that contains multiple points, your single question pretty much becomes invalid. Please don't quote the entire post.

You do realise that MS is in Redmond?
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
D
djgamble
166 months ago
That's good news... reading these forums recently you'd think everybody viewed Samsung as being the only option for mobile phones.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
P
psn
166 months ago
Apple is the worst company to deal with for an enterprise

I'm working as IT for a 20k users company.
service:
- they don't come to you. you have to bring the laptop to them.
- Very often they tell you to wait a week or two till it's fixed.
connectivity:
- NO docking from apple.
- 300$ dockings from elsewhere... and even that requires you to connect more than one cable.
I can go on about working in the enterprise software...
you end up working with Fusion / remote desktop very often.
to make things clear:
I got MBP 13" retina, MBAir 13" and iMac at home.
and i think anybody who considers a MAC in an enterprise is naive ( i had some other words... but let's make it more polite...).
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
M
mrhick01
166 months ago
1 company for every 5000 companies have a Mac install-base over 20%. Big deal.

Macs (like most business-class Wintels) are nice computers. Pricier, yes.

I'm not sure what the big advertisement is that Cisco has a 25% Mac user base. So what. I'm sure company X out there has a 25% linux base, too. And Company Y out there has a 25% Pepsi-drinking user base.

Talk to me when Macs hit a 25% install base in EITHER the consumer market or business market for a personal computer (not a tablet or a smartphone). As far as I can tell, for the past 30 years Apple peaked at 15% in either of those 2 markets...and that was in 2011 I believe.

And doing such would make them a $400 billion a year company rather than the ~$250 billion a year company that they are now.

How is not achieving this magical 25 percent number a demerit?
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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