AP
During its quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Apple CFO Luca Maestri pointed out that IBM has been saving roughly $270 on each MacBook its employees use instead of a traditional PC, largely due to lower IT support costs and better residual value.
He also said IBM now has over 30,000 MacBooks deployed within the company, and is adding 1,900 new MacBooks every week. IBM has committed to buy 50,000 MacBooks by the end of this year through its Apple partnership deal struck last year.
This isn't the first time we've heard Apple and IBM talk about the MacBooks' higher efficiency than the PC. Just a couple of weeks ago, IBM VP Fletcher Previn said at the 2015 JAMF Nation User Conference that just 5% of IBM employees using MacBooks called the IT help desk, versus 40% of PC users.
"Every Mac that we buy is making and saving IBM money," Previn said.
That may partly explain why Apple just set a new all-time high record of Mac sales this quarter. In the most recent quarter, Apple sold 5.7 million Macs, up 3% year-over-year, for roughly $6.8 billion in revenue. Mac sales account for the second largest share in Apple's overall revenue, after the iPhones.
This could also contribute to Apple's penetration in the enterprise market. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company now generates $25 billion in enterprise sales, up 40% from last year, and called it a "major growth vector" for the future.
"Enterprise business is not to be underestimated," Cook said. "Everywhere I look, I see significant opportunity."