Mac Adoption Quadruples In The Enterprise

According to Benjamin Gray of Forrester Research, Mac adoption among business users has quadrupled since 2006. What that means is that user percentage went from 1.1% in October 2006, to 3.6% a year later, and then to 4.5% in June 2007. These numbers appear small, but are extremely significant, says Joe Wilcox of eWeek, “Mac continues its slow gain among Forrester’s clients, even without an enterprise strategy. Apple’s singular focus on user experience has resulted in some success in the enterprise without even trying to break into the market.”

Wilcox claims that Apple doesn’t have a business strategy, and that this increase in the enterprise is happening largely as a halo effect of the iPhone and strong iPod branding and sales. Why? Because these very successful products boost visibility and sales of other Apple products, such as Apple computers, and in turn, this has lured enthusiasts and small workgroups with supple IT departments beyond the standard domain of design and media.” Is this true? Perhaps those successful products have brought new consumers into the Apple world but it has to be the line of Macs themselves which convinced buyers to make a purchase. To say otherwise isn’t giving the consumer much credit.

According to the Forrester report, in order to attract wider sales in the Enterprise, Apple should reduce prices and liberalise its controls over Mac repair, upgrade and servicing. What the report doesn’t seem to understand is that it is precisely Apple’s control over its tech support and servicing that assures maintainence of high quality of customer tech support. By relaxing those controls, there would be a risk that the kind of shoddy support Windows PC users suffer would undermine what has always been an important part of the Apple experience. It is precisely that ’singular focus on user experience’ that has resulted in such customer loyalty.

The expectation is that this quarter will see over 3 million Mac sales. It is hard to understand why Apple will shift gears at this point to change its repair or service model.