Microsoft Is Making A Load On iPads Sold To Enterprises
February 20, 2011
You may think that the arrival of the iPad finally marked the doom of Microsoft. One of the first companies to support the concept, Microsoft never delivered on "the tablet," and in a computing world soon ruled by the iPad, they have been left behind.
The iPad has been a runaway hit in the enterprise, and while companies seem to love it, they're not letting go of their old ways. According to a Morgan Stanley analyst, companies's deploying the iPad are doing so in parallel with Microsoft enterprise solutions. He surmises that Microsoft might be making as much as a $100 per iPad deployed in enterprise. As quoted by BusinessInsider:
"Enterprises are showing early demand for tablets, and will likely consolidate around two platforms – Apple & MSFT – with the former the early leader and MSFT having the ecosystem that greatly simplifies corporate management," writes Holt. Even if Apple owns the tablet market, Holt says Microsoft is picking up $100 per unit in revenue from enterprises using iPads. How? Holt says, "Where iPads are being deployed, corporates are often leveraging virtual desktops to provision Windows and Windows apps. MSFT generally gets $100/device in this scenario."Will this last? Probably not. Yes, enterprises tend to get locked-in to methodologies, but if you ever had to access a computer for more than five minutes while using a VNC client on your iPad, you can probably feel their pain. This leads me to think better solutions, for tablets, will eventually appear. In the meantime you have hand it to Microsoft for banking on the iPad. Who would have thought?