Research suggests business directors more likely to use Apple products at work

Forrester Research recently conducted a survey of close to 10,000 workers in 17 countries to determine which workers are more likely to own and use Apple products. The New York Times has published the results, which show that "business directors" -- in other words, bosses -- are the employee group most likely to own one or more Apple products and use them at work.

Here's a breakdown of the survey results.

Who uses Apple products:

43 percent of people earning $150,000 or more per year -- 87 of 200 respondents
27 percent of people earning $100,000 - $149,999
23 percent of people earning $50,000 - $99,999
19 percent of people earning $49,999 or less -- 1300 of 6800 respondents

21 percent of all 9912 respondents in Forrester's survey said they used one or more Apple devices for work.

The New York Times notes that the increasing penetration of Apple products into the workplace, often driven by people bringing in and using their personal devices, is wearing down traditional IT department hostility toward the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. However, as Ars Technica notes, the research also shows that while 50 percent of firms in "mature markets" offer Macs, only 30 percent of respondents said their companies support them, leaving many Mac users to fend for themselves at work.

Coupled with reports like Good Technology's quarterly results on device activations, it seems that the old practice of business and enterprise environments shunning Apple products is shifting quite rapidly. Forrester's claim that "Windows' dominance is at an end" is premature, however; while Microsoft's share of the enterprise pie is no longer as big as it once was, it's still claiming the majority of users in that sphere.

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Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/who-has-apples-at-w…

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Forrester Research recently conducted a survey of close to 10,000 workers in 17 countries to determine which workers are more likely to...

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trendslide

This is an interesting breakdown, it seems logical as Sean mentioned that individuals with high level of disposable income can afford to purchase more expensive equipment and bring it into work.

I think the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement is a good one. IT departments have the nostalgia of being slow to adopt, and as such hindering efficiency within an organization. New companies that have made a play into the enterprise space such as Box.net, Evernote, Etc have been able to accomplish much of their success due to the BYOD model.

The startup that we're building now, trendslide (http://www.trendslide.com) is building an business insight platform that you can access your business intelligence information on a mobile device. While security for this mission critical data is important, the BYOD mantra enables Directors or Business Executives while on the go to get important information when they need it.

January 28 2012 at 2:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sean McPartlin

I kind of chuckeled at this one.

1st off Apple stuff isn't cheap. So your telling me it's surprising a low percent of people making less than 50k use Apple devices for work? Or even get to use at work even if it's BYOD? That's not surprising at all.

People with a lot of disposable income (and people making less than 50k sure don't have a lot of that) can bring iWhatever In with them. If its allowed on the network or not. If your company uses exchange your probably able to use an IPad or iPhone to access your email. iT may support you or it might not. Unless they use Blackberry or are very controlling you likely can just access your email. (you can turn off Activesync support or require registration administratively before new devices are given access)

What is at the heart of discussion should be what these people think you should be able to do with these devices while at work. Access shared data like network shares? Most likely not. Allowed on secure wifi networks? Probably not... They should be on secondary wifi networks that are firewalled to just get to printers and the Internet.

You think I want some techno wizard with their home baked ROM of Android running around my network doing god knows what? Hell no. Personally I don't want a non corporate supplied device on the inside network if it ever can be helped. That's what guest networks are for. Firewalled, vlANed and maybe altogether separate networks for those unknown devices.

The BYOD model is something I am not in love with. If you need an IPAD your job should supply it. If you are not worth the expense to the company then you might just not need it. oh but you want it? Too bad.

Data is what matters. If the job gives you data that is important they might not want it just anywhere. When you follow the BYOD model you risk just that. Then people leave stuff around and it gets lost or stolen. There are steps that can be taken if you want to pay for it to control corp owned hardware. But it gets gray when it's BYOD.

Anyway, this story is kind of dumb is all I saying. Might as well say people with money want to use Apple devices.

January 27 2012 at 1:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

APC

I see it more and more at work. First there were iPhones which were not allowed to use the wireless networks now they give us instructions to how to set up Outlook on the iPhone. iPads are also becoming very common with people carrying it around to meetings and what not.

Personal idevices though are still not allowed to access SAN folders on the network.

January 26 2012 at 7:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply