AMI-Partners: Apple Shines Through Commoditized PC Market.

With Apple's Advancement in OS X, This Opens Doors to over 5M U.S. SMBs

- Says Latest Study from AMI Partners --

NEW YORK -- Compared with other PC manufacturers, Apple Inc. may not have the highest market share, but AMI believes this may be changing. The company is currently slated to launch an update of its powerful operating system this fall. And with desktop and PC sales to SMBs rising steadily, Apple finds itself poised for substantial growth in its thirtieth anniversary year.

According to the latest study from Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., Apple's year-over-year market share jumped over 100% for desktop PCs and notebooks. In the medium business segment (100-999 employees), Apple's desktop PC market share soared from 13% to 27%, while notebook PC shares grew from 8% to 18% in the medium business segment (100-999 employees). Similarly, in the small business (1 to 99 employees) market, Apple grew its desktop PC market share from 7% to 12%, and expanded its share of the notebook PC market from 5% to 8%.

With the recent rise in PC purchases, Apple is well-positioned to continue on its growth trajectory by capitalizing on innovative solutions and ideas, including the recent launch of the industry's first ever backlit LED screen for Mac Pro, or Mac's stylish looks, and through Apple's strong reputation for customer service. Apple's powerful operating system will also play a vital role in fueling its future market growth.

In 2005, Apple introduced a ground-breaking operating system, Mac OS X Tiger, which supports multiple OSs, including Windows, on a single platform. With this capability, Apple has dramatically expanded its opportunity to entice the 88% of small businesses and 98% of medium businesses that currently use Windows XP-based PCs to consider a Mac the next time they purchase a new PC.

"Since the launch of Mac OS X Tiger, Apple has gained record PC sales," said AMI analyst Yedda Chew. "With Mac OS X Leopard launching this coming fall, Apple may well attract a new wave of users, especially among Windows PC users that had been taking a wait and see attitude about Mac OS X Tiger." Apple PCs are well positioned to tap into SMB requirements and needs, for instance:

* US SMB backup and recovery software spending will grow by 10% in 2007 to annual spend of $582K, indicative of the increased storage and backup requirements of SMBs. Apple's new "Time Machine" allows SMBs to back up their PCs without the hassle of purchasing external hardware or software.

* US SMBs continue to utilize additional channels of communications (with lower cost) -- 400,000 U.S. SMBs are currently using Skype while mobile instant messaging (IM) is deployed by over a million U.S.-based SMBs. With this trend in place, iChat AV allows SMBs to effortlessly chat, but with their added features SMBs can concurrently present full presentations to clients/colleagues.

* SMB LAN adoption is becoming pervasive. Over 50% of SBs and 98% of MBs now have a LAN, and Apple's networking application known as Bonjour, allows SMBs to seamlessly access every major file server protocol, including AFP, SMB/CIFS, WebDAV and NFS file services running on Mac OS X Server, AppleShare, UNIX, Linux and Novell NetWare.

* AMI predicts that global SMB notebook shipments will grow by 20% in 2007 over 2006, outpacing desktop PC growth by five times. SMBs will increasingly depend upon mobility and convergence as the use of public wireless internet will grow by over 30%, and with the Macbook Pro this allows SMBs to access WIFI "hotspots" while on the go, as well as wirelessly syncing up with other peripherals such as a PDA through its built-in Bluetooth.

About the Study

AMI's 2006-2007 US Small and Medium Business Market Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment studies highlight these and other major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions. Based on AMI's annual surveys of SMBs across USA, the studies track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. This data points to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SB market requirements.

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, please call 212-944-5100, e-mail [e-mail], or visit the AMI Web site at www.ami-partners.com.

About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence -- with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and "go-to-market" solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies over the last ten years. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.