Apple’s earnings noted a halo effect, a.k.a. as the iPhone as a gateway drug.
Enterprise iPhone 4S activations spike, highlight Apple’s halo effect | ZDNet
Since its release in 2007, the iPhone has served as the perfect gateway drug to other Apple products in the home. Apple is now seeing this among enterprise buyers too.
I spend a fair amount of time attending enterprisey gatherings, so I get a nice sample of the hardware people rock for work. Years ago, I was among the very small number using a Mac. That has changed, but PCs still dominate these gatherings, by a large margin.
I see a ton of iPhones, like 95%, and iPads are very common too. Macs, not so much though, maybe 10-25% depending on the attendees.
So, if there’s a halo, I’m not seeing much of it.
I also get the sense that very few people BYOD, at least to conferences, e.g. many of the Macs I see have corporate inventory tags on them.
You? Comments?
Getting bigger in the tech conferences (as you know). Surprised they are not more popular with enterprisey types. They strike me as being more swayed by the pretties than the techies. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
I wonder how much the ‘halo’ is of interest to Apple, or specifically the MacBook part of the halo. Specifically, is the profit on a MacBook that important to them compared with the revenue from iPhones, iPads and iTunes etc. To my mind, they are firmly focused on consumer products not business products.
That’s the impression I get too, re. product development, but they clearly care about the sales side. Otherwise, why bring it up in the earnings call. Apple doesn’t really want to bow to IT requirements, so the product side can focus on consumers.
I think BYOD and the Apple halo are geographically influenced too, at least here in the US. After my previous years of observation and the very high number of iOS devices, I’m just a bit shocked that Mac uptake hasn’t followed.
Obviously corporate policy is a big factor. Still lots of support bods get confused when they see a Mac. If they keep saying, “We need training to support Mac”, then Mac isn’t going to get into their company.
I wonder how much is down to gaming? If you are a gamer, Windows is still king. Maybe these execs actually want Windows so they can play games all day. Can’t see how else they can fill their time. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Right, policy rules. One thing that hadn’t occurred to me before is that it’s much easier to bring an iPhone or iPad into work and use it then to bring a laptop.
The iPhone has its own network connection (iPad might too) so that definitely helps. Plus, the laptop has a corporate sibling, making it all the more obvious that you’re bucking the rules.
It might be your anecdotal sampling that is influencing your conclusion. The numbers for macs came out well ahead of the pc market, however where they went (business or home) wasn’t broken down.
see the following for an interesting analysis : http://thesmallwave.com/apple-vs-pc-shipments-pc-decline-worse-than-r
Well yeah, my experience is definitely influencing the question. I know Macs are out there, but I’m just wondering where they are. This is something I’ll be watching as I make the rounds of this year’s conferences.