Apple's (AAPL -0.28%) Enterprise Business has been something the company has kept relatively quiet about. That seems impossible, given its rather stunning size, but perhaps that's because investors have focused so much on whatever new product might be coming down the pike, along with rumored tweaks to existing lines.
That situation changed recently, as Tim Cook made some statements about the company's enterprise efforts and its prospects going forward. In this video segment, Fool's Dylan Lewis and Sean O'Reilly break down the products and partners for this quickly growing segment.
Listen to the full podcast by clicking here. A full transcript follows the video.
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Sean O'Reilly: The other trick to Apple that we don't talk about a lot is their enterprise segment. What do they talk about in the quarter?
Dylan Lewis: I love this quote from Tim Cook: "The enterprise business segment is not to be underestimated. I doubt how many people knew that we had a $25 billion enterprise business that we quietly built in not too many years."
O'Reilly: Surprise!
Lewis: Right? Yeah. This is the first time that I've seen that they've put a value on it. I looked back at the last three quarterly reports -- basically an entire fiscal year -- and all mentions of it were specific to initiatives that they had undergone with IBM, or other partners, or some of the things that they're doing in the space. Nothing had said "This is what it is."
O'Reilly: Just for our listeners who may not know what Apple's enterprise business does -- or me -- they're clearly not doing what AWS does at [Amazon.com] for storing data for companies. What are they doing?
Lewis: It's basically like a more mobile-friendly solution for a lot of these major businesses. It's just enabling the workforce to be a bit more flexible with the platforms that they're working on. I think one of the big struggles right now, everything that's specific to enterprise generally, has to do with iPad, iPhone, or Mac, the three major hardware segments for them. I think one of the limitations that Tim Cook has talked about in past quarterly calls is having the right productivity solutions in place to support what people need to be doing on their devices.
I think one of the things we're seeing -- and maybe this is in response to, and trying to catalyze their enterprise segment -- is the iPad Pro, which will launch in November, and some of the functionality that we're seeing with that and the iPencil and making it a more robust offering so it's not this Netflix watching device. It's something that you could work on comfortably whether it's design work, maybe some Excel work.
I've seen some solutions that are more Bloomberg oriented. You're clearly getting into a much more niche audience with that kind of stuff. They've also talked about some of their strategic partnerships with [Cisco Systems], some of the stuff they've been doing with IBM; it looks like they're scattershooting here a bit and getting the products out there a little more.
