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Apple's Chance to Grow as Half a Billion Windows 7 PCs Hit EOL
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Apple's chance to grow as half a billion Windows 7 PCs hit EOL [computerworld.com]:
As Microsoft pulls support for near half a billion Windows 7 PCs, it’s make or break for Windows-based IT and Apple has a chance to reap good harvest here.
The great migration
Apple’s solutions are now in use across the entire Fortune 500.
The company’s enterprise credentials continue to extend. At a recent Apple-focused enterprise IT event [computerworld.com], we encountered opinion [computerworld.com] and statistics [computerworld.com] to reinforce this point.
The point being that support for Apple technologies has become a human resources issue [computerworld.com], and that people entering the workshop will choose [jamf.com] to use that company’s technologies if they can.
This is prompting some of the world’s most influential enterprise firms to offer that choice to their employees [applemust.com].
Beyond HR considerations, IBM CIO Fletcher Previn points out multiple advantages [applemust.com] Cupertino’s computers offer, not least in terms of net promoter score, user experience and the actual costs of management, upgrade and support.
“Now, I don’t know if better employees want Macs, or giving Macs to employees makes them better. You got to be careful about cause and effect — but there seems to be a lot of corroborating evidence that says you want to have a choice programme,” he said in November '19.
The real enterprise IT
The positive upswell in support for Apple’s systems comes as around 417,000,000 Windows 7 devices (a big chunk of all Windows PCs currently in use worldwide) are about to experience Microsoft terminating support on January 14, 2020.
It’s a relatively safe assumption to think that at least some tens of thousands of these PCs could now be replaced by an iPad, or even a Mac.
Why wouldn’t some of these migrate to Apple’s platforms, when Microsoft’s fee-based extended support package costs up to $200 per device?
Apple’s Windows 7 replacement pitch
That’s a real opportunity for Apple, and gives the company a really deep chance to use the popularity of iPhones among enterprise users to pitch Mac sales in the new replacement drive.
It might not even need to try too hard to achieve this.
IBM has previously explained [computerworld.com] how running Macs is up to $543 per machine cheaper than running a Windows PC.
Add the cost of extended Windows 7 support to the likely cost savings of using a Mac; Factor in recruitment and staff retention costs and spice the sum with employee satisfaction, digital transformation and productivity benefits, and Apple has a good story to tell.
And a billion iPhone owners to tell it too.
It’s not as if the industry can’t see it coming
The analysts at IDC aren’t known to be Apple evangelists, but even they tell us enterprise IT decision makers expect to replace 13 percent of their current Windows 7 machines with Macs [idc.com].
Now, 13 percent of all the Windows 7 devices out there equates to tens of millions of additional Mac sales in the coming 12-24 months, though the number of those systems deployed across the enterprise is likely considerably smaller.
All the same, it’s hard to ignore the potential for millions of additional Mac sales. Not to mention that those sales could snowball, particularly now Apple’s fixed the butterfly keyboard and got back to pressing for high user satisfaction levels.
Recent financial data suggests Apple is indeed experiencing such a Mac renaissance. 2019 saw what Apple CEO Tim Cook described as the, “Highest annual revenue ever from our Mac business.”
Mac sales revenues climbed 2 percent across 2019, despite PC market stagnation.
It’s a fairly good bet that more enterprise IT decision makers than ever are at least now considering offering Mac choice programs as they move to upgrade their existing Windows 7 installations.
Analysts will be (or should be) asking questions about Mac sales come Apple’s January 28 financial call [apple.com]to build some sense of how Apple is performing in the Windows replacement curve.
Up next:
I think it’s fair to assume that many of these Windows 7 machines will be replaced by Apple, but that replacement may achieve something even more profound.
Think back to the moment in 2003 when Steve Jobs announced “Hell had frozen over” and introduced Windows support to iPods.
The already popular device was selling hundreds of thousands at that time, but the introduction of Windows support pushed this to tens of millions within months.
Those happy iPod owners helped juice higher Mac sales, while also setting the scene for the release of the iPhone, which (arguably, depending on who you speak to) now dominates the mobile enterprise [computerworld.com].
With half a billion Windows PCs to replace, how many Macs does Apple have to sell through for the industry to declare the platform a success? At what point will we see a 'Mac halo' emerge?
After all, as people use and share the benefits of the Macs they just got upgraded to, what chance is there that we’ll see a more profound move to replace PCs outside of Apple's traditional markets?
Perhaps there’s even an opening for a high-end Mac for the games market [google.com]?
It's all to play for, with a third of the existing Windows market on the gaming table.
Please follow me onTwitter [twitter.com], or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill [mewe.com] and Apple Discussions [mewe.com] groups on MeWe.
Copyright © 2020 IDG Communications, Inc.
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