Europe’s largest newspaper switches to Macs

Axel Springer AG, one of Europe’s largest newspaper publishers, plans to migrate 10,000 employees and 150 newspapers in 30 countries to the Mac. The migration will take approximately five years. When it has been completed, Axel Springer will be Apple’s second largest corporate customer, after Google.

A video message has found its way to YouTube. For those of you who can speak German, it is posted here: http://www.9to5mac.com/axel-springer-mac. For the rest of us, CEO Mathias Dšpfner lists four reasons for this change:

1 - Most of the company’s layout work is already done on Macs;
2- Macs are more user friendly than other computers;
3 - Apple creates the most elegant computers;
4 - Macs are cheaper to buy and easier to maintain now than in the past.

Seth Weintraub of 9to5mac.com writes, “This is excellent news for Apple for a number of reasons. If successful, it will be the case study that IT managers can point to when trying to convince their companies to switch to Mac. Until now the highest profile switcher has been Auto Warehouse Co. which is in the midst of a switch of 1000 desktops. It will also force Apple’s enterprise unit to put more might into its European operations…. Most importantly, it will give the world a chance to see what the Macintosh platform can do in a very large organization. If it works out as it should, it will give Axel Springer a large advantage over its competitors in spam/virus/malware prevention costs, training costs, repair costs and even attracting top talent. I have sent this news to all of my mixed environment clients who I think should go 100% Mac.”