Can This Market Save Apple?

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) attempts to diversify from its retail stronghold into enterprises and government bodies was working, according to data analysis website Trefis. And most of the brunt of this development was being borne by BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY).

As part of its latest forays, the company recently entered into deals with Home Depot (NYSE:HD) to replace 10,000 employees’ BlackBerry phones with iOS devices and the New Zealand government, whose police force plans to give out iPhones and iPads to thousands of officers. Earlier, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, and Australia’s Treasury Department also decided to migrate from BlackBerry smartphones to iOS devices.

“While [Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)] Android commands a big chunk (almost 70 percent) of the retail market, the situation is quite opposite in the enterprise space,” Trefis wrote. “According to recent Citrix Zenprise data, the iOS accounts for more than 55 percent of corporate customers in all the geographies that the vendor tracks. A big reason for Apple’s dominance in the corporate world is also due to its superiority in tablets, which comprised about 57 percent of enterprise iOS devices.”

According to Trefis, while the retail market was riskier and “open to the vagaries of high competition and eventual commoditization,” Apple could benefit immensely from enterprise growth because of the prevalence of multi-year contracts within it. It would also help the iPhone maker mitigate potential loss from slipping margins…