Forrester: Nearly 50% of businesses now issuing Macs, 27% support the iPad
The myth that Macs aren't welcome in the enterprise appears to be finally dying out, according to new research from Forrester. The company reports that almost 50 percent of businesses in North America and Western Europe now issue Mac computers.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the payoff line in a story Forrester itself has been building since mid-2011: the firm found Mac users more productive and urged enterprise IT to support the Mac back in October, after reporting that corporate Mac sales had surged 66% in May. The new survey converts that advocacy into a baseline measurement — nearly half of businesses in North America and Western Europe now issue Macs, and 27% support the iPad.
The pickup was unusually broad for an analyst data point — Computerworld, CNET, the WSJ's Digits and Bits blogs, Electronista and Forrester's own blog all ran it within days — which signals how contested the 'Macs don't belong in the enterprise' assumption still was. It also lands ten days after Electronista reported that 91% of business pros use iPads for work, reinforcing that Apple's enterprise beachhead is now measured in policy, not just purchases.
First-order effects
- IT departments at the roughly half of firms issuing Macs can no longer treat macOS as an exception: imaging, patching and helpdesk workflows built around Windows have to absorb a second platform as standard practice.
- Apple gains a documented, analyst-validated enterprise installed base it can sell against — sales conversations shift from 'will you allow Macs?' to 'how do you manage them?'
Second-order effects
- Vendors of endpoint-management and security tooling face demand for cross-platform (Mac and now iPad) support, while Microsoft's lock on the corporate desktop is eroded at exactly the moment its tablet answer has yet to land with buyers — Forrester already found the iPad trouncing Android in enterprise adoption.
- Competing analysts and OEMs will be pushed to publish their own enterprise-OS numbers, turning Mac share from anecdote into a tracked metric that shapes procurement debates.
Third-order effects
- If issuance keeps climbing, the consumerization-of-IT pattern hardens into structure: employee-preferred devices become the default corporate standard, and OS choice migrates from IT mandate to user preference with IT providing the management layer.
- A durable Apple enterprise franchise would give the company recurring hardware pull independent of consumer cycles — and force every rival's enterprise strategy to be priced against a two-platform reality rather than a Windows monoculture.
The trend: Enterprise computing is shifting from a Windows-mandated desktop toward IT-managed, employee-chosen Apple devices, with analyst measurement like Forrester's legitimizing the shift for procurement.