IBM became Apple’s largest corporate customer this year when it agreed to buy 50,000 MacBooks from Apple, but according IBM’s chief information officer Jeff Smith, the company will more likely end up purchasing between 150,000 to 200,000 Macs when all is said and done.
In an internal IBM video, Smith describes how he and Apple CIO Niall O’Connor struck the deal that will see 50-75% of IBM’s workforce switching from Lenovo ThinkPads to Macs. Apparently that’s not good enough for Tim Cook though, who asked IBM VP Fletcher Previn, “well, what about the other third?” when the company told the Apple CEO of the massive bulk order they were planning.
Watch the video below:
Despite being bitter rivals the past three decades, Apple and IBM have forged strong partnership over the last year in an effort to increase both company’s presence in the enterprise market. IBM employs nearly 380,000 people worldwide. so if the deal does go through it would make the company nearly 10 times bigger than Apple’s current largest corporate customer, which purchases about 25,000 Macs.
Source: MacRumors
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
