Apple’s MDM industry perspective: M&A on the way

debbiecaseyJuly 9, 2022

Apple device management is at the heart of the hybrid mobile enterprise, and vendors that support Apple’s MDM (mobile device management) platform are investing as they seek to build for future growth. At this stage in the evolution of the Apple device management industryWe seem to be on the fringes of M&A frenzy with players in that space trying to build unique identities to sustain future growth.

Industrial activity is increasing

Jamfarguably one of the biggest firms in the Apple MDM business, was investing deeply in companies and services extend the tranche of security and device management tools it can provide to its customers. These extend to powerful content monitoring, zero trust, and endpoint management.

Jamf CIO Linh Lam recently noted the acceleration of Apple’s enterprise market status, predicting: “As demand grows and the expectations of younger generations enter the workforce, Apple devices will be at their peak by 2030.”

Recently, we’ve started to see entities outside of Apple’s device management space looking for an entrance. VMWare ar The $ 1.17 billion acquisition of AirWatch in 2014 showed what was to come. Ivanti in 2021 bought MobileIron. Later, GoTo is in the process getting Miradore cloud-based cross-platform device management provider. And arguably one of the biggest illustrations of this kind was Apple’s 2020 acquisition of vendor MDM Fleetsmith, whose solutions are now rolled inside Apple Business Basics.

Elsewhere, Hexnode yes into a partnership with Keeper Security; JumpCloud in February MYKI received expand its cloud directory platform; Kandji continues attracting investment capital while playing his own long game; Adjective working with Acronis (the latter) It also works with Jamf); and Maoile $ 196m funding round was recently closed and was introduced new solutions for enterprise customers.

The irresistible force of it

This activity has a purpose, of course. As enterprises become more digitized, the market value of device management is expected to increase Achieve $ 28.7 billion by 2027.

To put that figure in context, that’s about four times the current value, which means there’s huge scope for growth in space, especially around Apple devices.

We have previously looked at the acceleration there, as Mac and iOS now combine about 23% global mobile phone / PC consumer market share and higher enterprise / knowledge worker market share. When it comes to Mac, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa Apple recently predicted that Apple will seize 10.7% of the PC market in 2026 as Windows share slips. And, of course, the 2021 Dimensional Research survey found that 85% of IT decision makers Apple devices are more secure.

With hundreds of millions of PC replacements now appearing as old Windows OS installations expire and companies trying to secure all endpoints against catastrophic business failure, Apple’s side of this equation remains an extremely attractive target for the all these parties (and I probably forgot some of them). ).

Tightening space in these markets, Apple MDM vendors are under pressure to expand the functionality of the solutions they provide while defining their own unique market position.

Many hope to achieve this by expanding their core products with security, remote support, and collaboration tools or by specializing in the needs of vertical markets such as education, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Why a wave of acquisitions could be on the way

Of course, with SAP, BlackBerry, Cisco, Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, Sophos, SOTI, and others also vying for some or all of the same business, smaller sellers They have to work hard to develop their own unique offerings. This suggests (at least in my mind) that we will see a wave of mergers and acquisitions sometime soon as larger entities reach out to some of the smaller firms to try out more cross – platform MDM tools. offer effects to enterprises. secure customers and growth in a challenging market.