An expert estimates that Apple has a $37 billion business that it barely talks about

• Back in 2015, Tim Cook revealed in a comment during an interview, that Apple's enterprise business - products and services sold to businesses, not consumers - is a $25 billion a year affair.
• In the three years since, Apple hasn't publicly updated this number.
• Being quiet like that is often a less-than-good-sign, but in Apple's case, all the evidence points to Apple's steady investment and growth in the enterprise market.
• One market researcher estimates that Apple's growth has been at least 50%.
• Apple is so quiet about its enterprise ambitions that another company, an unaffiliated software firm, has become known for the throwing the biggest conference for Apple's enterprise IT customers.

On Monday, nearly 2,000 professional IT people swarmed into Minneapolis to attend the largest event of the year for people who support Apple devices for a living.

Apple makes billions of dollars each year selling its technology to businesses but it doesn't throw a customer conference. The closest is its World Wide Developer's conference for people who build apps. That's not exactly the same crowd as the IT pros responsible for fleets of Apple products at their companies.

So the conference held by JAMF, a company founded by two former IT people that makes software to manage fleets of Apple products, has become the de facto gathering for enterprise Apple IT people. On stage this year, for instance, SAP described how it manages 17,000 Macs, 83,000 iOS devices, and 170 Apple TVs for its employees, IBM announced it will open source (aka give away for free) its own tools for managing Apple devices. Microsoft announced a partnership. This is the kind of news that Apple might announce if it held its own customer conference.

As Apple gets ready to launch new iPads and Macs to entice consumers and business users next week, the JAMF conference points out an interesting anomaly: Apple has an enormous enterprise business that it doesn't talk much about.

The lack of detail about the enterprise business is not entirely out of character for the secretive Apple. But according to one analyst's estimates, and a little back-of-the-envelope math by Business Insider, Apple's enterprise business could and should be a roughly $37 billion business today, or about 14% of the companies revenues.

$25 billion back in 2015

Back in 2015, Tim Cook opened the brown wrapper on this business a bit when, during an onstage interview with Box CEO Aaron Levie, one of Apple's enterprise partners, Cook said Apple's enterprise sales had hit $25 billion over the previous, rolling 12 months.

"This is not a hobby. This is a real business," Cook told Levie. At the time, the $25 billion represented about 14% of Apple's revenue in the 12-month period.

The implication is that Apple didn't fall happenstance into its enterprise popularity because employees started bringing their own iPhones and Macs to work. Apple has been courting businesses, building out the sales and support infrastructure that large companies need.

Since that 2015 interview, Apple has oft repeated that $25 billion number but has never publicly updated it. And Apple declined comment when we asked although Susan Prescott, Apple's VP of product marketing who heads its enterprise business, doubled down on telling us that this business has been a deliberate focus for Apple for many years.

"Our commitment and attention to enterprise is something we've been focused on since the early days, because we know the best devices enable you to do your best work," she said.

"With iPhone, we set out to completely rethink mobile, to enable the things we knew people wanted to do, including at work. In the first versions of iPhone we added enterprise features like Exchange email support and VPN, and we engaged with businesses and IT to understand their needs. Since then we have added enterprise features with every major software release," she added.

Growth all around

Often such radio silence about the actual numbers suggests that a once thriving business is no longer that healthy. But in Apple's case, all indications are that Apple is selling more to businesses than ever and that this isn't by accident.

Since that 2015 on-stage appearance, Apple has signed up several more big enterprise partners. Its first one was announced with IBM in 2014. Since then, it added SAP as a partner that helps companies build custom iOS apps in addition to using them internally.

Apple signed on giant consulting firms Accenture and Deloitte as partners that help enterprises build IT projects based on Apple tech.

Apple sends its own experts to work at Accenture's design studio, while Deloitte has trained more than 5,000 consultants. Deloitte's own employees use 75 custom iOS apps and 100,000 Apple devices internally, too.

Apple partnered with GE to help industrial companies build iOS apps, and with Cisco to make Apple devices work better on corporate networks and with Cisco's collaboration tools like WebEx.

"If look at that number [$25 billion], since then they've added at least three more partners which would give you at least 50% of more growth," estimates esteemed enterprise market researcher Maribel Lopez principal of Lopez Research.

At 50% growth, Apple's enterprise business should have hit $37 billion by now, maintaining its contribution of 14% of Apple's annual revenue.

More to come

And there's more to come. For instance, last month, Apple announced a similar new partnership with Salesforce to bring Salesforce's customers onto Apple devices using custom apps.

Apple has its own design studio where it consults with businesses on their app design needs.

And, while Apple has had an enterprise sales force for years, it is clearly staffing that up, too. A quick search on Apple's job site found 160 jobs that reference "enterprise." This includes everything from sales account executives, to sales engineers (they help companies map out their technical needs) to a managers for a mysterious enterprise voice and video project. And a quick search on LinkedIn shows thousands of people who work at Apple either in enterprise sales, or in a technical role supporting projects for enterprise customers.

"Apple spends more time working with IT leaders than we give them credit for," says Lopez.