Apple Enterprise frustration continues

Apple, for all of its recent success, really hasn’t done what seems so easy for HP, Dell and Lenovo — Make a dent in the enterprise.  Yes, some smaller firms are finding a great deal of success rolling out the MacOS and a large number of companies have creative departments with Macs.  However, no large company, with perhaps the exception of Apple itself, has gone completely Mac.  Huge creative conglomerates like WPP and Omnicom would be lucky to hit 50 percent.

Computerworld today laments on the issue, blaming Apple’s priorities and lack of any desire to dive into this lucrative market.  If Apple ever had a better chance to hit the big time market share gains it would be now – with Vista bombing hard.  However, the following concerns were given for the lack of adoption:

• Legacy concerns
• Cost of support and ownership
• Are third-party software vendors on board?
• The complexity factor
• No second source
• Service and support

Until Apple addresses these concerns, marketshare isn’t going to move much – Apple might get a few points here or there but double digit gains won’t happen.  Also, as sad as it is to say, Apple needs to start marketing itself in the enterprise space.  It is very difficult for Macintosh Administrators to overcome perception that Apple isn’t ready for the enterprise.  Most business leaders don’t think the Mac platform is Enterprise-worthy and most CIOs are too change-adverse to investigate making a switch. 

Until Apple spends some time and money on the enterprise space, their marketshare will continue to hang below 10%.  Maybe things will change next week?