This isn't a post about the iPhone

For those of you not in the tech business you probably didn’t notice that yesterday was the first day of the annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. Actually for many of you in the tech business you may not have noticed either (and certainly there are many of you who don’t care).

For many people any conversation about Apple is too much about Apple. How is it that a company with just 10% market share in PCs and 30% market share in a SMALL segment of the cell phone business can get so much coverage? Sure there is the coolness factor and the innovation thing but come on! None of these justify the amount of media coverage and fanboy-ism that Apple gets over its competition.

I’m not going to talk about that today either.

What I am going to comment on is that as successful as Apple has been over the last ten years and as innovative as their products and vision have been for consumer electronics (which have contributed inarguably to a sky high stock price, tremendous revenue growth and a growing stockpile of cash - $30B at last count), they have completely sidestepped a much larger revenue opportunity: corporate IT. I also know that Apple simply doesn’t care that they are leaving billions on the table: this I know because I have been personally rebuffed over and over again in trying to sell my services, proposals for business and other overtures to build a business value proposition for the company and its products. I have also spoken to many others who have been similarly turned away.

Think about it: Apple already has a limited server line. Their OS is built on top of enterprise ready Unix / BSD. With only some minor tweaking they could build a solid enterprise value proposition around innovation, quality and reliability. Yes it wouldn’t be low cost which is a major reason why Dell has been successful in selling into the enterprise. However with a focus on ease of use they could make immediate in roads into the SMB / Mid-Market business space which, while very sensitive to the price, is just as overheard constrained and ease-of-use would enhance a strained IT (or complete lack of IT for that matter).

There is precedence for this move on Apple’s behalf. There are numerous system integrators and resellers that are working to make Apple enterprise-ready. There is no reason for Apple to build a direct sales force to focus on an enterprise sale either. There are many ready channel partners who can build the GTM and the focused solutions from the desktop through to the datacenter. They have added Exchange support to their applications and will extend this critical business solution interoperability to the OS itself with the forthcoming distribution Snow Leopard. Now all they need to do is hire a few people with B2B experience to focus a GTM (and make even a few points in the largest IT market).

If Apple only took a small part of this advice imagine what their stock price would do then!

As I’ve tried to tell Apple many times before... I’m available if they want to talk about this opportunity!