Apple takes business technology very seriously, and it wants the world to know this. On Wednesday, the company tried to send the message across at a business conference with one top executive on the stage.
Used for both personal and professional work
Around one month ago, in a conference hosted by Dropbox rival Box, Apple CEO Tim Cook informed attendees that Apple’s enterprise technology sales had touched $25 billion annually. Now Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, has continued Cook’s talk at the Dropbox conference by reiterating the push Apple was making into selling technology to businesses. Apple does not have a history in selling to specific industries.
Referring to this, Cue said, “We don’t know vertical markets.”
For this particular reason, it partnered with industry giants such as Cisco Systems, IBM and Microsoft. Still, Cue said Apple is very popular with customers who make use of its devices for both personal and professional work. This gives the iPhone firm an opportunity to enter the workplace.
When Apple released the iPad tablet, Cue talked of two emerging trends. In addition to consumers, executives and top corporate managers are also buying the devices. This brought a change to board meetings where the executives made use of iPads for exchanging documents. Gradually, business management teams became more comfortable using the iPads and started to introduce them to other workers.
Apple can capitalize in mobile technology
Apple will have to go a long way before it becomes a big enterprise tech player, believe some analysts, but Cue insists the company can capitalize on the area of mobile technology as most businesses are still in the early stages of adopting it.
Apple reached a stage of bankruptcy in the 1990s. Acknowledging this, Cue said that though Apple was all over the map, it lacked discipline and worked on too many products at a time rather than focusing on just a few. Cue believes the return of cofounder Steve Jobs as CEO played a major role in the company’s resurgence.
Cue joked, “It’s hard to lose billions of dollars unless you try to give it away.”
On Wednesday, Apple shares closed down 0.47% at $122. Year to date, the stock is up by almost 11%, while in the last month, it is up by over 6%.
