AT&T’s Ron Spears, CEO of the telecom company’s Business Solutions unit, says four out of 10 iPhone sales are to enterprises, reports “ZDNet” (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/at-t-exec-4-out-of-10-of-our-iphone-sales-to-enterprises/35145). The exec made the comment t the Barclays Capital Communications, Media and Technology conference on Thursday.
“ZDNet” says that Spears said that the iPhone is basically a computing device to enterprises and some of them are forgoing laptop purchases if an employee can get buy with Apple’s flagship phone. “If they’ve got a field service force that needs one or two applications on a daily basis; do they need to go out and spend $1,000 or $1,200 for a laptop and then worry about sort of the lifecycle costs of keeping up with the laptop?” he said.
A similar case is likely to be made for the iPad. And you also have to wonder what sort of “halo effect” this will have on Mac sales in the enterprise.