Description: Steven P. Jobs never cared much for selling Apple products to big businesses. A funny thing happened, though, in the last few years. Big companies started buying Apple products — a lot of them — for their employees.
Source: NYTimes.com
Date: Nov 15, 2011
While corporate technology buyers say Apple does not try to hide the fact that consumers are still its top priority, they note that the company has gotten easier to work with in recent years, adding features to its devices that make them more palatable to business. It also doesn’t hurt that Apple’s new chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, is known to be far more at ease meeting with the C.I.O.’s Mr. Jobs once so memorably disparaged.
“What they’ve done in the past few years is really started thinking in a deeper way what the enterprise needs,” said Rich Adduci, chief information officer of Boston Scientific, a medical device manufacturer that has distributed about 3,000 iPads to its field sales people, and expects to buy 1,500 more by the end of the year. READ REST OF STORY
Questions for discussion:
- Why did the business segment of the tech market never embrace Apple?
- What has changed in this segment of the market to make business adopt Apple products into the business segment?
Sydney D
One of the reasons that the business segment never took the initiative with Apple products was because Jobs marketed Apple products to consumers rather than businesses. Apple didn’t come out with business friendly software for businesses to be attracted to. Lately, everyone is on the move and doesn’t have the time to look through manuals and books to find an answer. Because of this change in the business world the Apple iPad has become very popular with people on the go. One main benefit is the ability to do a quick search without having the iPad to load up unlike a laptop – which is also quite bulky. Another reason Apple products were never embraced was because they were very pricey-and still are today. However in the long run, the technology that Apple offers is well worth the money since they are always adapting to changes and provide easy updates for the user-either business or consumer. I think that it is good that Apple doesn’t have a 10-year plan to follow. Technology changes so fast that if they were to plan for the future, they would end up falling behind because they didn’t make the necessary changes when they needed to.
Kristin Schneider
It seems simple enough to me, any work tasks that require portability and constant updates are benefiting from Apple products like the iPhone and the iPad. Employees have retired their laptops and are now going portable with these new gadgets. One of the obvious reasons is that these gadgets are easy to use, portable, and a heck of a lot cheaper than a desktop computer or even a laptop today. Apple was the first to introduce a product in the tablet craze, which gives them a leg up on the competition that is now introducing tablets themselves. I also believe that businesses are adopting Apple products because of their “ease of use”. Recently, Apple has added features to their products that make them more pleasing to businesses. In previous years, Blackberry was the image of business, which is one of Apple’s major competitors, but now we see that image evening out among Apple and Blackberry and even now the Android. One benefit of this is employees can now walk around with their tablets, and help their customer’s right on the spot and right at that moment. I believe that companies are starting to recognize the benefit to this and that may be the reason they are starting to jump in to the Apple craze that is going on today.
Jian Li
Apple considers the customers as priority makes what it is today. As a result of customer concerned, Apple gains much profit and customer loyalty. However, in the world of business, a company has only two choices, developing or being eliminated. Even though as an incredibly successful company like Apple, it needs to be continuously making new movement. Looking for larger market share and more opportunities, as well as developing new technologies and gaining more competitive advantages to make sure not to turn the loyal fans down is an important for Apple in such a competitive world. Therefore, attracts more business users is necessary. Although with a lower quantity than the customers, the single purchase of a business is obviously more profitable than an individual customer. With the opportunity and Apple’s ability—both the technology aspect and the marketing aspect, Apple will be more successful than ever. When catering for business users, Apple can make adjustment and development for its existing products or develop new products for business use. As for existing products like iPhone and iPad, more functions or accessories can be added as well as the apps. For innovations, new devices with Apple’s core technology may be a good choice.
Brad Zhang
1. The first reason is Apple’s market tactics. Apple focus on consumers more than businesses, they prefer to sell their products to individuals rather that corporations. So, based on this strategy, Apple does not offer software service to businesses but only sell them the devices. The second reason is Apple never tell the market what is its next plan. For example, everyone was expecting the iPhone 5 was coming out last month. However, Apple did not say anything about what it was going to release. So when the market finally found the new release was iPhone 4S, Apple’s stock price dropped. This makes businesses very hard to make decisions; they don’t know when Apple will release new staff which may make the devices they bought not suitable any more.
2. Recently, Apple started to put features into their products for fitting businesses’ requirement. Also, since Tim Cook turn to be the CEO, Apple changed its attitude to businesses. Apple has started to take care of both markets. What I concern is, there are now millions Apple products in the market and the number is still increasing sharply. Will this large number of consumers draw back the speed of technology development? Although people like new technologies, they shall be able to afford it first.
megane
Apple has always focused its efforts in trying to satisfy the customer better now without really worrying about selling to big business. Given the success of Apple today we can say that he was able to identify the request of customer .Apple has never marketed Macs to enterprise customer. This is how great companies are built: They focus on exceptional Individuals and build products for them, and let individual determination thesis how to make best use of the enterprise technology. The Is Now clamoring for Apple products Because Apple first solved Individual Employees’ Needs. Apple made complex technology easy, an incredibly task difficulty.
Its possible Apple will become more enterprise-centric in the future, but i doubt it. Because Apple does not seem to target market in the way people other companies do.
Joseph Walls
It has been a long time coming. Apple cannot ignore the business industry any longer. This is however terrible for RIM and Blackberry, as this is the only segment in the market they are out performing their competitors by far. Maybe Blackberry is doomed after all
Ivette
The reasons why business markets were not embraced by Apple were: first because of Mr. Job’s objective for Apple to focus primarily on individuals rather than offering businesses attractive software and apps they could work with (That is also why Blackberry, a strong competitor for Apple, was the image of businesses). The second reason is the fact that Apple doesn’t give away information about what they are going for next, and this makes it difficult for businesses to know whether to invest or not in Apple technology, a recent example of this is what happened when everyone was expecting the Iphone 5, but Apple decided to launch the Iphone 4s instead.
Apple has, however, started to include business fitting apps for businesses, which has in turn increased sales. Also, companies have realized that Apple products are easier to handle and to work with, for example the Ipad and its convenience to work with in different industries. Apple has made a great decision to take into account not only individual customers but also businesses, because although individuals might be faithful purchasers, businesses are usually more profitable and able to purchase larger quantities of products.
Destiny S
Creating, marketing and selling products to consumers and not business has always been the focus of Steve Jobs and Apple. In recent years, however, businesses have begun purchasing mass amounts of Apple products for business use. Apple now sees the value in selling, marketing and creating products aimed for business use, as the revenue stream can now be that much larger. The article suggests iPhones and iPads have become extremely popular as they allow products and inventory to be searched instantly on the store floor in a retail application, or at an airport hanger to pull up blueprints or maintenance guides for some popular aircraft and airlines. The possibilities are endless for Apple technology in the business world, and, albeit slightly more costly than an IBM counterpart, it can be argued that the Apple products could be a much wiser investment over the long term.
Erin
Businesses did not tend to use Apple products, because they were more seen as “play & fun” and RIM’s Blackberry was seen as “work & business.” This changed as Apple started to realize the potential market that the business segment offered, and started to make their phones and tablets more compatible to business needs. Allowing documents to open and save on their products really helped their business. The multitude of apps that are available for businesses really helps too. I know many people in business that use either the iPhone or and iPad for basically everything they do. They find it very user friendly, and their are so many helpful apps, for whatever market area they are in. I don’t think Apple was wrong in being careful of focusing on business rather than consumers; in fact, I think it was their consumer focus that drove businesses to want to use their products.
Bubba_34
A good question is why did the business segment of the tech market never embrace Apple till now? This could be because the founder Steve Jobs was not big into selling to big companies. What may have helped Apples presence in the business sector is Apple’s new chief executive Timmothy D Cook, which he is known for his more friendlier personality. Also what could have contributed to this problem with Apples absence in the business sector would be that they are not as compatible with as many software’s in the market as PC’s are. This has a huge impact on the Apple, as companies would have to get or create new software and their cost’s would go up making Apple a less likely choice. Some things have changed recently though. Apples is on the rise and there stocks have never been higher, and Apple is making a huge impact on the world today. What maybe have caused this impact? Some of the things are the release of the IPod and the Iphone. These have been tremendous for them, which was in a result of millions in sales from just these two items. Also the name that they have been building for themselves. Some of the things that they are known for are that their operating systems are very rare to obtain viruses and they are more reliable.
Brad
The business segment of the tech market never embraced apple because apple never embraced the business segment. Jobs was always against the CIO’s of Fortune 500 companies, and they continued to focus on their consumers as the driving aspect of Apple. In turn, RIM was viewed more as a company who focused on the needs of the business world. With the change in the business segment, more companies are adopting apple products because of their ease of use for their employees, and in turn for the consumers. Apple products, even though they may have not been designed for the ussage of the business segment, in turn have been fully adopted by many major players. This may be apart of the look and the easily adaptation of apple products, and one that could benefit not only apple, but many major corporations as well.