It’s no secret that the global smartphone market is experiencing a decline. With the exception of a few select economies (India being prominent among them), everywhere else phone manufacturers are having a hard time luring customers to make a buy. Apple is no exception.
Over the past year or so we have seen Tim Cook say over and over how they are looking to “expand into newer territories”. That’s basically code for “we’re willing to try anything and everything to find new avenues of growth.” Obviously, they are branching out into newer industries and building newer partnerships on the way.
One such new deal has been signed between Apple and Deloitte.
Apple has entered in an agreement with Deloitte to encourage companies and their employees to use Apple products in the workplace. While Apple’s primary demand comes from the consumer market, the fall in demand worldwide is a worrying trend. Therefore, there company is looking to venture into deals with large corporations that provide technology solutions, such as IBM, SAP, and Cisco.
The role of Deloitte would be an advisory one. It would encourage big business to adopt Apple products on a universal scale for all business activities. The main products Apple is looking to push are iPhones and iPads. Their secondary products would be the Mac lineup and Apple’s Software solutions.
The recent updates to macOS Sierra and iOS 10 can be seen as a validation of this intent of Apple as they have added numerous features for collaboration and auto-backup.
According to Apple’s data, they have witnessed a 40% increase in their sales to businesses in the past fiscal year. Even after this huge jump, the $25 billion they made is only a fraction of their overall sales of nearly $235 billion. Still, Cook is pleased with their growth. He said on record to the Associated Press:
“It’s a healthy number and it’s an incredibly great growth rate.”
Apple has been a favourite of many businessmen for personal use. However, the corporate sector had been ruled for a very long time by Blackberry. After its decline from early 2012, Android has taken over the mantle of the corporate phone of choice.
Blackberry sold itself on security. Android is selling itself on adaptability (the Google open-source code can be reworked easily to suit the exact specifications of the company). Apple is hoping to sell itself on the basis of their ecosystem — where all their devices and software are synced wirelessly over the cloud.
Deloitte’s CEO Punit Renjen was quoted as saying,”Deloitte has created a team of 5,000 consultants to advise corporate clients on how to deploy Apple devices for specialized business tasks, such as insurance claims adjusting or retail sales, and building software apps for their business.”
One can see how Apple’s new and improved ecosystem of products and services might be an attractive option for corporates. At the same time, the corporate is a much tougher sector to penetrate than the consumer market. So it will be interesting to see how Apple approaches this new phase of their game plan.