Apple’s iPad sales dropped again in the September quarter, selling a total of 12.3 million, or 13% less year-over-year.
That means iPad shipments have declined every quarter in 2014 on a year-over-year basis, according to BI Intelligence.
Yet, Apple CEO Tim Cook remained particularly upbeat about the iPad’s future prospects during Monday’s earnings call, and reassured Apple’s commitment to the tablet market.
“I’m very bullish on where we can take iPad over time and so we're continuing to invest in the product pipeline,” Cook said.
One of the main reasons for this is the growing demand for iPads in the enterprise.
Apple’s CFO Luca Maestri said during the call that there’s “momentum in enterprise for iPad,” and that "progressive IT organizations" around the world are deploying in-house apps for iPad.
For example, pharmaceutical company Sanofi has over 25,000 iPads and 450 in-house apps, while iWare designer Soft iCA is using more than 10,000 iPads, according to Maestri. This has led to a 39% increase in the number of registered enterprise developers.
More importantly, “hundreds of corporations” worldwide have expressed interest in IBM’s MobileFirst solutions for Apple’s iOS solutions, since the the Apple-IBM partnership was announced in July, he said.
We’ll get a first peek at that partnership next month when Apple and IBM roll out the first batch of its joint enterprise products. Cook said those apps will first be released across six sectors, including banking, government, insurance, retail, travel and transportation, and telecommunication, and they have 50 corporate clients signed up already.
“The deeper the apps go in the enterprise, the more it opens up avenues in enterprise and that's a key part of the IBM partnership,” Cook said.
