Just as much of a hit as the iPad has been in the consumer market, it’s also become a tool at the highest and widest reaches of business as well. Today Tim Cook said that almost every company in the Fortune 500 is testing iPads at the moment.
“In the office the iPad is showing up more and more and doing more and more things,” he said.
That was the perfect segue to begin looking at the iPad mini and all of Apple’s other iPad news today, the 4th generation iPad and the iPad mini.
The iPad has had some major milestones since launching in 2010. There have been 100 million iPads sold in just 2.5 years. “We couldn’t be more thrilled by how iPad has been embraced by users for so many things, but we know we are just getting started,” said Tim Cook. “But we are not taking our foot off the gas.”
Interestingly, within that Apple has had some major milestones in the enterprise sector, both anecdotally and also by Apple’s own admission. In addition to making some major headway with large private companies, it also being used by the public sector. Yesterday, the iPhone was chosen by the U.S. immigration and customs enforcement — and as my colleague Darrell wrote, “that opens the door for iPad use.”
In Apple’s Q2 results, Cook made several references to how well Apple was doing in the enterprise segment, specifically around the iPad. He referred to “rapid adoption” of the iPad in particular, with the number of iPad tablets more than tripling among Fortune 500 companies. “The iPad has become an indispensable tool worldwide to help employees across the industries do their jobs more effectively,” he said at the time.
We have also heard some of this anecdotally. Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, says that among Box’s enterprise customers, 6-7 out of every 10 work in primarily iOS environments, with iPad leading the charge.
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Earlier, Tim Cook wasted no time in putting out some impressive numbers to set the stage for today’s announcements, and he reached far and wide for those stats. One of the biggest from the word go was that that Apple has already seen 200 million devices upgraded to iOS6 since it launched last month. That makes it iOS6 the fastest upgrade in Apple’s history.
He also noted that Apple’s legacy “mobile” handset — the iPod — also reached a milestone: 3 million have been sold.
Running through some other milestones, books have seen some action, too: 1.5 million books are now in iBookstore, and 400 million downloads to date of iBooks.
With 100 million iPads now shipped, there are now also 275,000 iPad apps in the App Store — 25,000 added in the last month.
