Not satisfied with iPhone sales, Apple aims for RIM's share in enterprise

November 24, 2010 9:38 AM
Matthew Lynley
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Some companies might call it a victory when they ship 14.1 million phones. Apple apparently takes it as a sign that it needs to barge into another company’s market space.

Apple could be making a move into the enterprise space after hiring five executives in the past year and a half that specialized in marketing Research in Motion’s BlackBerry phone, one of the most popular phones in the world for business professionals.

That shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise, as Apple has always been a bit of a silent powerhouse in the enterprise market. The iPhone has taken the lead in enterprise phone sales, if you discount RIM’s BlackBerry — which has a dominant share of the enterprise market and around 46 million customers. The iPhone 4 accounted for more than 30 percent of mobile device activations for enterprise purposes, and more than 10 percent of activations were iPads, if you discount RIM’s presence in the enterprise market.

The iPad, Apple’s tablet computer, is particularly popular among the largest companies in the world on the Fortune 100 list — about 50 percent of them are either using the iPad or are rolling it out. An analyst with Wall Street firm Piper Jaffray said Apple could probably sell 21 million iPads next year as a result of its presence in the enterprise space. Maynard Um of UBS Investment Research said earlier this month that Apple could sell up to 28 million iPads in 2011, as well.

Apple’s Mac computers are also becoming increasingly popular among enterprise users. Apple’s sales to government organizations grew 201 percent in the second quarter of this year when compared to the same quarter a year earlier. Its enterprise sales as a whole grew 50 percent in the second quarter when compared to the same quarter a year earlier – compared to an average 16 percent across all companies.

And it’s a good time to jump into the enterprise market. RIM is struggling a bit trying to comply with government requests for access to private corporate data. India, as well as a handful of other countries, threatened to ban BlackBerry services if RIM did not comply with demands to make enterprise email and messages available for government viewing in August. RIM has said time and again that it cannot physically decrypt the data. It then doubled back and said it would allow the Indian government to view that information.

So there could be some concerns about the security of the BlackBerry messaging service among corporate users that need to keep their email messages secure. Apple hasn’t publicly offered any kind of security guarantee — but there aren’t a number of countries ready to ban the phones, either. So the new hires come at a fortuitous time for Apple, when it has a chance to capitalize on RIM’s security woes.

  • http://schlomoto.myopenid.com/ schlomoto

    this is not reporting. this is some apple cheerleader. “if you discount RIM” Huh! government sales went up 201 percent. From what? 2 phonesto 4 phones! No government agency uses iphones except maybe schools. Oh yeah and the iphone and apple are very cooperative with other companies and governments.
    Grow up kid.

  • http://twitter.com/logicalmoron Matt Lynley

    It's pointless to try and gauge growth in enterprise at this point if you include RIM in the conversation. RIM currently has around 46 million enterprise BB customers — which completely dwarfs everyone else. The BlackBerry is almost exclusively used as an enterprise device. You can only draw some meaningful conclusions about the growth of the device when you compare it to everything else because RIM is in such complete control of the market.

  • Jack_Gold

    Some information in this article (and your comment above) needs to be corrected. First, BB is not only an enterprise device. About 50% of BlackBerries are sold to consumers who don't use them in enterprise settings. Next, RIM did NOT allow India to view emails. They do not control the encryption keys so they are correct when they say they can't do that. What they allowed India to do was see the PINs of various devices on the network, which identifies users, but does not decrypt the messages. Third, nearly all enterprises are looking at using tablets, but very few have so far rolled out any large quantities of devices. While its true they are deploying iPads, the only really viable tablet on the market today, that is about to change with many more devices coming to market. Enterprises are also looking at Android tablets, and RIM's PlayBook. Its far too early to tell which tablet(s) will dominate the enterprise. Finally, Macs represent a share in single numbers when it comes to enterprises. So increasing sales dramatically only means that they increase share from 3-3.5% or so.I don't thnk that is much of a trend setter.

    Overall, I believe several of your assumptions in this article are wrong. And I am not trying to be a fanboy of one or anojther company/device… just want your facts to be accurate. Please check facts more accurately in the future.

  • http://twitter.com/pcarrescia Peter Carrescia

    “Five executives in the last

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