While Apple claims to be trying to install serious hardware in corporations, it is hamstringing its own efforts by ignoring the channel.
On its fourth-quarter earnings call, Apple CFO Luca Maestri revealed that Apple’s enterprise business grew “strong double digits” in its fiscal 2022, picking out Cisco’s Mac programme as a case study for its progress here.
However senior director analyst at Gartner, Ranjit Atwal, said that Apple’s share in the enterprise PC market as “creeping up” and not becoming the market player that it believes.
According to Gartner’s figures, Apple’s share of the PC and tablet market in western Europe has risen from 8.97 percent in Q1 2020 to 11.74 percent in Q2 2022.
If you remove iPads, the numbers are down to a disappointing 2.64 percent. To make matters worse, Jobs’ Mob’s market share spiked during the early part of lockdown and generally plateauing or even dropped back slightly since then.
The reason was that the shift to cloud had made Apple’s job that much harder because it is fighting against Windows OS but the whole Windows suite including Teams, Atwal said.
Fighting against this is Apple’s traditional hatred of moving outside its own walled garden and working with partners. While Apple does have partners, the numbers are small. For example, to handle the education market it is uses a handful like Jigsaw24, Academia and Sync and only four, Academia, XMA, Albion Computers and Sync – gained a place on the latest Apple HE Framework, a £200 million Apple purchasing vehicle for universities.
Apple’s attitude is truly bizarre given that some of its partners such as Softcat and CDW have been making a killing.
Softcat CEO Graeme Watt recently confirmed that Apple is growing “at premium rates” within the portfolio of the UK’s largest reseller.
Atwal, however, said that any efforts by Apple to grow its penetration in the channel will be a long-term project.
“Building out relationships with a channel is a long-term strategy to get them in front of clients that they might not otherwise get in front of.” [Never use a preposition to end a sentence with – Churchill. Ed.]
