Brendan Byrnes: Hey Fools, I'm Brendan Byrnes and I'm joined by Andrew Tonner, tech and telecom Analyst for Fool.com.
Andrew, so much is talked about with Apple, but maybe one under-appreciated potential catalyst going forward... what is it?
Andrew Tonner: It's tablets.
[laughter]
Andrew: No, but it actually is tablet-related. I think it's enterprise adoption. So many people look at Apple as just a consumer-only company, and it largely is, but at the same time now as we see tablet adoption gaining traction with the consumers, there's a natural progression for that to bleed into enterprises as well.
We saw some recent analyst numbers or commentary come out supporting this idea. Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray's analyst covering Apple and one of the biggest Apple bulls out there, recently came out with his survey of 59 company chief technology officers, basically trying to get a feel for what their investment trends were, and things like that.
The numbers were actually pretty impressive for Apple, as well. Of the 59 people surveyed, 57% said they planned a tablet roll-out in 2013, versus around 47% last year, so there was growth in overall adoption, but at the same time the scale of these adoptions is another potential huge win as well.
Of those people surveyed, around 15% expected those to be major roll-outs, and that's again up, almost quadrupling from 4% last year.
The idea that people using these in the workplace -- like we are right now, in fact -- definitely has legs. I think it's one of the things, when people look at Apple, it's sort of under-appreciated. Holding a huge share of the tablet market that they do, will largely benefit them as well.
I think people saw maybe the Microsoft Surface and Windows 8 being unveiled as a potential enterprise disruptor, but again we haven't seen the data come out to support that again.
Apple has a huge, huge following, especially now as we're also seeing consumer preferences being accounted for by chief technology officers with their smartphone, tablet, and even computer preferences as well. I think this is a smaller data point as far as the overall Apple investment theme goes, but there are just so many positives with this company now.
It's probably the most obvious buy in technology right now. It really doesn't make sense to me why you wouldn't want to hold the company. It trades at a substantial discount to the overall market, but it has no debt and will grow at rates far, far exceeding the market's overall growth rate right now.
I think, again, it's just another data point why Apple's a buy today.
Brendan: I agree, and that's good news as an Apple shareholder. Thank you, Andrew. Head over to Fool.com for more analysis.
