Taking a bigger bite of Apple: Is it time for the channel to take the Mac-maker more seriously?

Heavyweights including Jigsaw24's Roger Whittle, TD Synnex's Dave Watts and Gartner's Ranjit Atwal weigh in

Taking a bigger bite of Apple: Is it time for the channel to take the Mac-maker more seriously?

Since Tim Cook took over as CEO in 2011, Apple's revenues have virtually quadrupled, while its market cap has swelled from $349bn to $2.4tn.

What's more, in its most recent quarter, Apple bucked the wider downturn in fortunes for Big Tech by racking up record Mac sales and - most poignantly for the channel - registering "strong double digit" growth in its enterprise business.

The Mac, iPad and iPhone maker is hardly a newcomer to the business market, crossing the threshold of serving the entire Fortune 500 a decade ago and boasting a $25bn enterprise business as long ago as 2015.

But as its ‘Mac Means Business' ad campaign with CDW on the London Underground this summer underlined (see map, below), the consumer-led vendor is redoubling efforts to increase its enterprise penetration.

Apple is still seen by many as having, at best, an ambivalent stance towards the channel that serves this space, however, finishing 39th out of 45 vendors in CRN's most recent Vendor Report. "There is a definite air of ‘you are lucky to do business with us'," read one typical response from one respondent at a large reseller.

So how should a sceptical channel be approaching this increasingly mighty but enigmatic vendor?

Here we examine Apple's enterprise progress, the key to success for working with the fruit-based vendor, and how much headroom Apple has for further growth.

What's driving Apple's enterprise growth?

On its Q4 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.

But despite Apple's recent market share gains, senior director analyst at Gartner, Ranjit Atwal, characterised its share in the enterprise PC market as "creeping up", rather than surging.

According to Gartner's figures, Apple's share of the PC and tablet market in western Europe has risen from 8.97 in Q1 2020 to 11.74 per cent in Q2 2022.

Take out iPads, and the equivalent figures shrink to 2.64 and 5.41 per cent, respectively.

Gartner's figures show Apple's marketshare spiking during the early part of lockdown and generally plateauing or even dropping back slightly since then (although its data does not include Apple's most recent, bumper quarter).

Atwal said Covid has been a double-edged sword for Apple in the enterprise.

The general shift to a cloud environment fuelled by the pandemic has "probably made Apple's job a little bit harder" because it is now fighting not only against Windows OS but the whole Windows suite including Teams, he said.

But, at the same time, several Covid-related trends are conspiring to make Apple more of a natural competitor to HP, Dell and Lenovo in the workplace, Atwal explained.

"The choices on the table have increased because businesses have worked out that they're more flexible than they realised. And then Apple maybe becomes more of a choice than it ever was previously," Ranjit Atwal, Gartner

"Before the pandemic, businesses were shy to experiment," he said.

"But the pandemic has shown that they can move quickly. They can move to a cloud environment or to different operating systems. The choices on the table have increased because businesses have worked out that they're more flexible than they realised. And then Apple maybe becomes more of a choice than it ever was previously.

"The other thing that's come out through the pandemic is the reliance on devices. Reliability and productivity were around as questions before, but never really part of a strategic intent.

"And the last thing is that users have generally increased their digital dexterity, which again bodes well for Apple.

"So there are a couple of trends moving forwards where Apple becomes much more of a choice than it was previously."

Apple's move two years ago to freeze out Intel and begin producing its own chips for Mac may also put it in the box seat among enterprises worried about potential long-term supply chain disruptions, Atwal added.

See next page for more on how quickly Apple is growing in the channel, and how partners can get the best out of Apple...