Apple as the Last Hope for Growth in Business PCs

There was a time when spotting an Apple product in the average corporate workplace was only slightly easier than catching a glimpse of a unicorn. Now comes a report saying that Apple will most likely be the main reason the corporate computer hardware market will show any growth at all this year.

In a broad report on global information technology spending that it plans to publish on Monday, Forrester Research estimates that government and business purchases of computers will grow a meager 1.7 percent, to $146.6 billion, in 2012 from the year before. Forrester includes tablet computers like the iPad in its forecast; sales of iPads to businesses are booming. Forrester estimates that business spending on iPads will rise 76 percent to nearly $10 billion this year.

That growth, along with a 9 percent increase in business spending on Macs to $6.7 billion, will help offset what Forrester expects to be a dismal year for PCs and tablets that run Windows. The firm estimates that spending on Windows machines, which account for the vast majority of information technology spending on computers, will decline 3 percent to $124.1 billion this year. Sales of Linux and Android tablets to businesses will help lift the market too, rising 52 percent to $5.9 billion, Forrester estimates.

Apple doesn’t disclose its sales to the corporate market, so Forrester’s estimates of the company’s business sales could be flawed. Andrew Bartels, the analyst at Forrester who wrote the report, said he relied partly on surveys of thousands of corporate I.T. managers to determine how much they were spending on Apple equipment.

Mr. Bartels’s estimates include company reimbursements for Macs and iPads that employees initially bought on their own. Apple has benefited greatly from “bring your own device” policies being adopted by some companies, in which workers are permitted to use personal technology products to access corporate e-mail systems and other applications.

One of Forrester’s assumptions is that the coming introduction of Windows 8, the new Microsoft operating system, will not be the defibrillator for the market that many people in the PC industry are hoping it will be. That product will come out in late October, along with an array of tablet computers intended to take advantage of its touch-friendly features. Mr. Bartels believes that many businesses will go slow in their adoption of the new operating system, deciding that the computers they have are good enough for a while.

“I think it will have a positive impact, but it just won’t be a great positive impact,” he said.