According to a report published today by Gartner:
By 2010, end-user preferences will decide as much as half of all software, hardware and services acquisitions made by IT. The rise of the Internet and the ubiquity of the browser interface have made computing approachable and individuals are now making decisions about technology for personal and business use.
Accordingly, the report says, IT departments are increasingly taking this into account when making IT buying decisions. Wikis, blogs, social bookmarking tools, tagging and RSS are steadily growing in presence and importance in organizations because of the value people have found by discovering and using them outside work.
The same report also predicts that Apple will double its current 6.1% US and Western European PC marketshare to ~12% by 2011. Now that's good news for long term investors in the company!
John Gruber has some good analysis:
...if they're right, the math is just spectacular for Apple: it's not like Apple is expanding into the low-end budget computer market, so if they do double their share, it'll take place entirely in the middle-to-high end of the market.
(via AppleInsider)
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