Apple’s been a beneficiary of the BYOD craze that’s hit corporate IT departments everywhere. The policy resulted in lots of workers bringing not only iPhones and iPads into the office, but Macs too. But BYOD isn’t the only reason Apple’s presence is growing at your office: IT departments are also buying more Macs and iPads for employees. That’s according to a new report from Forrester published Friday.
In putting together the Global Tech Market Outlook for 2012 and 2013, Forrester talked to 46 major IT vendors as well as agencies like the IMF, U.S. Commerce Department and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and now estimates that over the course of 2012, Apple will sell $ 9 billion worth of Macs and $ 10 billion worth of iPads to enterprise companies worldwide. That’s up from the estimated $ 6 billion spent on Macs and $ 6 billion on iPads in 2011. Forrester calls its corporate growth “the big surprise of 2011,” especially because Apple has never actively or directly targeted business users. The report notes:
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. That’s because corporate adoption of Apple products has been largely clandestine, occurring through three channels.
Those three channels?
- IT departments buying iPads. In October, Apple reported that 93 percent of the world’s Fortune 500 companies are trying out or actively issuing iPads to employees. (Expect an update on this number on January 24.)
- Smaller companies buying both Macs and iPads for employees. These types of companies tend to purchase devices that employees can use both at work and at home, Forrester says.
- Workers BYOD-ing iPads and Macs, and then harassing their IT department to support them. (For more on that, see my GigaOM Pro piece here — subscription required.)
While Apple continues to make inroads into the corporate IT market, traditional PCs are expected to lose ground: Forrester estimates global corporate spending on Windows-based PCs and tablets will decline 3 percent next year, as you can see in the chart below:
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