Apple's iPod made its way into business environments as employees realized that, in addition to all those MP3 files, they had 60 Gbytes of portable storage to take into the office. Then came the iPhone and its growing array of browser-based business applications. Is Apple's grassroots popularity translating into more business sales? Apple officials won't answer that question directly, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that Apple is riding the "prosumer" wave for all it's worth. "We're seeing a lot of growth in business use," Apple's COO Tim Cook said at a press event in August. "Mac is growing, and a lot of that is business." At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, CEO Steve Jobs noted that Apple has more than 950,000 registered developers, up from 750,000 last year. With the new, fastIntel( INTC)-based processors, Apple's innovative design, the stability and security of the Mac OS X operating system, and software like iChat videoconferencing and the latest iWork productivity suite, businesses have many reasons to switch to the Mac, says an Apple spokesman. Apple's roster of customers includesGoogle( GOOG) and several other large business users. Apple doesn't distinguish between sales to consumers and businesses, but Gartner reports that $897 million of Apple's revenue in the United States in the second quarter of this year came from the professional market, compared to $610 million from consumers. The revenue is for destop and notebook computers only, and excludes software and consumer electronics devices such as the iPod. Within the professional segment, 50% to 70% of Apple's revenue comes from the education sector, 20% to 30% from small and midsize businesses, 5% to 10% from the government, and 5% to 9% from enterprise customers, according to Gartner's estimates for the past four quarters. Microsoft(MSFT)'s doing its part to help. Microsoft on Sept. 25 said it will ship a Macintosh version of its new Office productivity suite in January. Office 2008 for Mac will come with Word 2008, Excel 2008, PowerPoint 2008, and Entourage 2008, a contact and scheduling application. Entourage 2008 will make it easier to adjust out-of-office settings, which previously had to be accessed through Apple's Safari Web browser in Outlook Web Access. Office 2008 will be the first to use the Aqua toolkit, making it a native Mac OS X application rather than a port of an older technology. That means the user interface will be more conformant to Mac standards. Users of Mac Office 2004 will be able to upgrade to Office 2008 for $239.95. The full retail version is priced at $399.95. Several vendors also rolled out storage products for Macs at the Apple Expo 2007 in Paris. Iomega(IOM) introduced the UltraMax Pro Desktop Hard Drive for Apple's professional line of computers. The $600 drive comes with 1.5 Tbytes of storage. LaCie unveiled a two-disk RAID (redundant array of independent disks) system, a collection of drives that comes in 1, 1.5, and 2 Tbyte capacities. Western Digital introduced My Book Studio Edition external hard drives, with capacities from 320 Gbyte to 1 Tbyte. Apple last year switched to using Intel chips in Macs, promising a complete transition to Intel by the end of this year. Previously, Apple used IBM's PowerPC processors. The switch gives Macs higher performance, according to Apple. It has also "instilled confidence" among IT managers in Apple, says Michael Fey, a software developer at PAR Government Systems, a provider of system design and IT services to the U.S. government. "Intel is the market leader for processors," he says. "Now Apple users can take advantage of their proven performance." Four years ago, PAR used mostly Windows PCs. Now half of the 16-person software development staff at the company uses MacBook Pro laptops for writing Java apps. Most recently, PAR tested aDell( Dell) PC and Mac Pro, both with similar features: eight CPU cores, a terabyte hard drive, and 4 Gbytes of RAM. Despite Apple's reputation for being the more expensive option, the Mac Pro ended up being $800 cheaper than the $4,000 Dell machine, says Fey. There are about 20 Macs deployed at the Florida Association of Realtors, a 100-person professional services organization. The association just purchased three more servers. "There's not a lot of freezing or crashing, and in the last four years we haven't had a single storage failure with the Xserve," says system administrator Jeremy Matthews. Apple's new generation of iMacs, unveiled in August and starting at $1,199, are designed to compete on price and performance with midrange PCs. The updated iWork suite includes a Numbers spreadsheet application (capable of importing and exporting Excel documents) and other capabilities that make it a direct competitor with Microsoft(MSFT) Office. iWork is priced at $79, compared to Office's $300 retail price. Apple has sold 1.8 million copies of iWork, Jobs said in September, adding "We see the iMac having some traction in business." An upcoming "Leopard" version of Mac OS X, due this month, will offer features likely to attract businesses, not the least of which is improved security. Leopard will come with file-sharing preferences that show which folders a Mac is sharing, providing more control over who can access shared folders. Leopard has been sandboxed, meaning protected from hackers trying to hijack an application to run malicious code. Sandboxing puts restrictions on applications and which files they can access. Leopard also features a "Time Machine" that keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on a Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, multimedia, and documents. But it's no ordinary backup application. It takes a memory snapshot of how the system looked like on any given day, so a user can go back in time and revisit their Macs in the past. Training Camp, a provider of technical training courses, recently began offering a three-day Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist course. The course helps students pass Apple's own help desk certification test, though it's not certified or supported by Apple, says Joe Barnes, director of enterprise technology product management at Training Camp in Philadelphia. Barnes uses a MacBook Pro running both Mac OS X and Windows Vista. "I'm just amazed at how wonderful Vista runs on a Mac piece of hardware," he says. If businesses had the knowledge of what the Mac can do, he adds, "they may take a second look at them." A growing number of companies seem to be doing just that.
Apple In Business: Riding The iPhone Wave
For handset makers, it's all about location
Nokia's announcement Monday that it will purchase digital-map provider Navteq for $8.1 billion illustrates the premium that both mobile handset and services providers are placing on location-based services. It could also mean that budding market will briskly move from niche service to standard feature.
"Everyone's going to have to move in that direction. You'll be missing something if you don't have (location-based services)," said analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates.
Location-based services (LBS) is a phrase used to describe the combination of the mobile Web and GPS data. It's a feature that will become even more in demand as portable gadgets become ubiquitous and staying connected assumes first priority. Add-on services are also one of the most surefire ways for manufacturers to make a few extra dollars in profit margin on consumer hardware. A side effect of the appeal of LBS on omnipresent devices like cell phones is that standalone GPS devices could go the way of the PDA.
Up to now, location-based services for most people meant getting directions from one place to another. But the vast database of location data that companies like Navteq can provide to mobile service providers, ad and marketing companies, and hardware makers opens some intriguing possibilities.
Giving directions is one thing, but when your device knows where you are, a slew of services can be tailored to your specific geographic needs. You could, for example, find the closest Starbucks, the locals' favorite Thai restaurant, or the gas station with the lowest prices. You could plan for inclement weather, reroute your commute around road closures or accidents, compare prices while shopping for gadgets or appliances, or keep tabs on friends or family members.
That Nokia would be the one to scoop up Navteq wasn't necessarily expected, but the Chicago-based map provider has been an acquisition target since navigation device maker TomTom offered to purchase Navteq rival Tele Atlas this summer for just over $2 billion. Navteq is one of the largest providers of digital mapping services, and Google was seen as a likely suitor. The world's No. 1 handset maker stepped in instead, leaving Google and any others fairly slim pickings in terms of acquisition targets now that the two biggest LBS companies have been snatched up.
LBS will be in higher demand by a whole host of industries beyond mobile phones, namely business that sell, well, anything, Gold said. Auction sites, like eBay for example, could find location services helpful in authenticating mobile purchases from its site. And companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft that are targeting advertisements will always want more specific information about consumer characteristics, preferences and locations to tailor their messages.
The technology to do this is already available, but for the most part, it is not yet linked to an individual's specific location. The availability of GPS chips in devices is the main barrier in mainstream adoption. "We're very GPS-poor from a device standpoint," especially here
