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Apple throws out more stats on enterprise uptake of iPhone, iPad

Enterprise uptake for the iPad, iPhone continues to grow, Apple COO Tim Cook said this week.

How 'bout dem Apples? More than 80% of the Fortune 100 are planning for or evaluating the iPhone, while 50% of the same group are testing and evaluating the iPad, said Apple COO Tim Cook on Wednesday after the company, despite the iPhone 4's AntennaGate controversy, again reported stellar revenue and profit growth.

For comparison, the 80% of Fortune 100 planning or evaluating the iPhone is up from 70% six months ago.

The article by ZDNet's Larry Dignan also quotes Cook saying that 60% of the Fortune 500 are deploying or piloting the iPhone. Impressive stats, though not that surprising, when you consider that presumably-conservative corporate giants like Wells-Fargo and Mercedes-Benz are adopting the iPad, and one survey by Zogby International (full disclosure: commissioned by Sybase) shows that more than half of American smartphone users would use a tablet like the iPad for work if they could.

While acknowledging that the iPad could cannibalize sales of other Apple computers in the enterprise, Cook argued that the more likely scenario is that the iPad would pave the way for more Macs in the enterprise.

"We’re still selling principally to consumer and education, but we are seeing businesses with increasing interest in the Mac," he said. "The Mac share is still low, and so there is still an enormous opportunity for the Mac to grow, and certainly the more customers we can introduce to Apple through iPads and through iPhones and through iPods, you would think that there might be some synergy with the Mac there, and there may be synergy between the iPad and the iPhone as well. This is where it is great  to have a lower share, because if it turns out that the iPad cannibalizes PCs, then I think it is fantastic for us, because there is a lot of PCs to cannibalize. It is still a big market."

One of the non-troll/flame comments after Dignan's article backed up Cook's statement. Entitled "A trend is emerging that IT is ill prepared for," the commentator claimed, "I work for a big government department and pressure is beginning to mount for IT to support personnel owned devices. Most of these are iPhones and iPads."

That supports what I believe is the budding-but-bona-fide trend of Bring Your Own Device into the enterprise. The iPhone loosened BlackBerry's grip, though Android phones are helping/benefiting. The other beneficiaries are users with tablets like the iPad, as well as netbooks and laptops. This is already common in Silicon Valley tech firms. But when you hear that "pressure is mounting" at a government agency, you know we're getting closer to a Tipping Point.

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