Apple enterprise sales of Macs, iPads to jump 58% this year

Computerworld - Apple will sell an estimated $19 billion in Macs and iPads to enterprises in 2012, a 58% jump over the year before, a research analyst said today.

And in 2013, corporations will spend $28 billion on Apple computers and tablets, said Andrew Bartels, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Although Apple's share of the enterprise market will remain small compared to rivals like Microsoft and Windows computer and tablet manufacturers -- the latter, for instance, will sell $69 billion in hardware to enterprises this year -- Apple's uptick is impressive.

More so, even, than the often-touted move by companies to cloud-based services, Bartels argued.

"The biggest disruptive force in the computer equipment market is not [the cloud], but Apple," Bartels said in a recent report. "Its rapid growth in the corporate market has been the big surprise of 2011, and it will be even more of a factor in 2012."

Bartels estimated Apple's 2011 sales to enterprises at $12 billion, split evenly between Macs and iPads.

He attributed Apple's recent high corporate sales growth rate to what he called "clandestine" acquisitions of Macs by higher-level employees -- who are sometimes reimbursed by their firms -- iPad purchases by IT departments and small businesses buying computers and tablets for both personal and business use.

"The Apple assault on the corporate market has so far taken place without much formal Apple support, and probably without Apple itself understanding its full extent," Bartels said.

While he stressed that his numbers were only estimates -- Apple does not break out sales to businesses in its earnings statements -- he defended them as "in the ballpark." More importantly, he was confident that Apple, at least in the mid-term, would be able to sustain those growth rates.

"Tim Cook is much more attuned to the corporate market than Steve Jobs was," said Bartels in an interview today, referring to Apple's current and former CEOs. Jobs, Bartels noted, was famously dismissive of the enterprise market. "But Cook could be a difference maker."

Cook, who was Apple's chief operating officer before taking the CEO spot last August, was the company's day-to-day leader during Jobs' last two years, when the iconic entrepreneur took a pair of months-long medical leaves.

Jobs died in October, less than two months after stepping down as CEO.

Bartels cited several moves Apple has made to accommodate enterprises, including creating a corporate sales team and offering volume discounts on iPads.