While Wall Street wrings its hands over Apple's outlook in the consumer market, where low-cost Android alternatives are threatening iOS' dominance, there is an area where iOS is kicking butt right now, Tim Cook says: the enterprise.
In Apple's quarterly phone call with analysts, Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer gave a number of shout-outs to Apple's success with the enterprise.
It’s clear that the enterprise area has huge potential, and we’re doing well from a percentage of companies that are using iPhone and iPad. It’s up to unbelievable numbers. The iPhone is used in 97% of the Fortune 500, and 91% of the Global 500, and iPad is used in 98% of the Fortune 500 and 93% of the Global 500.
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And also, as I think was mentioned earlier, 90% of tablet activations in corporations are iPads. And 95% of total app activations were on iOS.
Oppenheimer also outlined a bunch of companies that have "tens of thousands" of employees using iPhones for work, including Accenture, Cisco and American Airlines. Plus, he mentioned two companies, Deloitte and GE, that each have "50,000 iPhones each."
He also named the big iPad customers: British Airways, Kindred Healthcare and the National Football League.
He gave a shout out to reports by market research firm IDC, which said the iPhone held 59% of the U.S. enterprise market (when lumping businesses in with government and education users), and the iPad has a 78% share.
Apple is serious about growing its enterprise presence even more. It has added new enterprise features to iOS 7 and its new Mac operating system, Mavericks, such as tools that let enterprise write custom apps.
He also noted that iOS 7 has received a security stamp of approval certification from the federal government (the FIPS 140-2 certification). That cert is required by many federal agencies and federal contractors. It's also used by lots of other businesses that view it as validation that the device can be made safe from hackers.
But Cook also warned that enterprise isn't an easy market to win, even though the payoff should be more of these huge contracts, eventually.
I think the road in enterprise is a longer one. ... And I think we’ve done a lot of the groundwork as you can tell from these numbers that I’ve given you, and I would expect that it would have more and more payback in the future.
