Companies Embrace the Mac—Slowly

There are more reasons than ever for businesses to choose Apple computers over machines that run Windows. Why aren't more of them doing it?

by Arik Hesseldahl

New hires at Google—and there are legions at a company that adds an average of 84 new people a week—get many perks. Among them: coin-free washing machines, free shuttles to nearby locales, and even on-site dental care. A recent addition to the list, depending on the job: the option to use a Macintosh, rather than a machine running Microsoft (MSFT) Windows. A Google (GOOG) spokeswoman says Windows computers far outnumber Macs, though Macs are less rare than they used to be at Google's Mountain View (Calif.) headquarters.

Apple Computer (AAPL) machines are showing up at a lot of companies these days. Macs have been used at Genentech (DNA). The Washington bureau of Time Warner's (TWX) CNN is a Mac shop, where interviews are sometimes conducted via iChat and programming is edited on Macs. Even IBM (IBM), the company once considered an ideological enemy by Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs, houses a cadre of Mac users. "We use what we sell," says Ken Bisconti, vice-president at IBM's Lotus division, which last year released a new version of Lotus Notes, the corporate messaging and collaboration software, for the Mac.

Technology managers in large businesses historically have shied away from Apple computers in favor of PCs running Windows, arguing that Macs don't run the software corporations use most. Many IT professionals have tended to believe that Macs are great for folks in graphic arts and advertising—but not the rest of the company.

Strong Sales Growth

But the corporate tide is slowly starting to turn in Apple's favor. "The numbers are clearly going in the right direction," says Tom Cahill, who runs the Mac sales business for CDW (CDWC), a vendor of IT products and services that generated $6.2 billion in sales in 2005. The company doesn't break out revenue on Apple products, but Cahill says Apple sales are headed noticeably northward among corporate clients. "The IT managers we deal with are saying they'll consider a Mac, and that's new," Cahill says. "Even a year ago that wasn't true. That leads me to believe that 2007 will be a telltale year for Mac sales."

Last year wasn't too bad either. Apple's share of the U.S. PC market jumped to 5.8% in the quarter that ended in September, when it sold 935,000 Macs, according to research firm Interactive Data (IDC). That's 30% higher than the same period in 2005, when Apple sold 737,000 Macs, and compares with a global growth rate of 7.9%. The share performance placed Apple only slightly behind Gateway (GTW) in the U.S.—though it's still well behind Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

Lotus Notes, Bisconti says, is second only to Microsoft Office as the most widely used software in big corporations. The software is used by 127 million people at 62,000 sites globally. And at 80% of those sites, a portion of Lotus users are running the Mac version, he says. "It tracks pretty closely to the Mac's overall PC market share, at about 4% to 5%," he says. "But that's still a lot of Macs."

IPod Halo Effect

Part of the newfound Mac love in the workplace can be chalked up to the iPod "halo effect." The increasingly popular digital music player has acted like an evangelist for all things Apple by raising the company's cultural profile and visibility among corporate executives.