TOM KEMP'S CENTRIFY BLOG

Mac Shipments to Hit 3 Million This Quarter? And an Upcoming Webinar on "Managing Macs in a Windows Environment"

Friday, August 22, 2008

I found it interesting to read that one analyst is predicting that Apple will ship 3 million Macs this quarter, which would put Apple on a glide path to grow global PC market share from to 4.2% in 2009 from 2.9% in 2007. No doubt the growth this quarter is being fueled by students going back to school. And at this rate it also looks like Apple will probably sell between 10-11 million Macs this calendar year, with calendar Q4 probably being another good quarter given the holiday gift-giving.

I definitely see Macs popping up more and more at customer sites and in coffee shops wherever I travel in the U.S. But what is interesting is that IDC earlier this year predicted that in 2008 there would be 8 million paid Linux desktop shipments and over 5.5 million unpaid for a total of 13.5 million Linux desktops shipped this year, much more than what Apple will do with the Mac. It may be the case that Linux will "outship" Macs on the desktop in 2008 — IDC said that "Red Flag Linux" would be contributing 3.5 million units alone this year — so maybe customer sites and coffee houses throughout Asia are filled with Linux desktops vs. Macs and hence the market lead. I personally don't know having not travelled to Asia in a while, but probably an interesting topic to research and write-up in a future blog post.

Speaking of Macs making a march in a Windows world, the Enterprise Desktop Alliance ("EDA") — a consortium of software vendors focused on making Macs more manageable in a Windows environment — is hosting its first live demo on September 9, 2008 at 11 am PT / 2 pm ET. Click here to register. As you may recall from a prior blog post, Centrify helped form this organization and is one of the founding sponsors.

The goal of the webcast is to let you see how you can take the same data protection, identity management, software and client management, and network infrastructure that you use for Windows and use them to organize and control the Macs in your environment. In other words, what this webinar will show is that Mac users can get the complete Mac experience while IT folks can get the confidence that the policies and best practices that they have put in place for their Windows system will extend to those Macs. Centrify has been working with the other partners in the EDA to deliver to the market innovative product interoperability, so it should be an informative webinar showing how customers can get a set of tightly integrated solutions for their Mac management needs.

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