Channel programs News

Slice of the Channel: Apple Won’t Report iPhone Sales; IBM Looks To Become Top Hybrid Cloud Provider; Icahn and Dell Showdown Heats Up

Apple sees strong Mac sales ahead of Macbook Air and Mac Mini refreshes. CEO Tim Cook said that the company saw an "all-time quarterly record for Mac revenue" during Apple's fourth quarter of fiscal 2018. But the same can’t be said for iPhones: Apple reports that unit shipments for the iPhone were flat at 46.9 million units sold. This comes as Apple said it will no longer report iPhone sales numbers. Rosenblatt Securities and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have both downgraded Apple’s stock since its earnings report.

IBM said it plans to acquire Red Hat for $34 billion. It’s a big bet that IBM is making on cloud and open source, but one IBM CEO Ginni Rometty calls a game-changer. She forecasts that the deal could make IBM the world’s No. 1 hybrid cloud provider. The deal is expected to be good news for the IT company Perficient, named the Red Hat Rising Star Partner of the year for 2018. Perficient CEO Jeff Davis told investors that IBM and Red Hat have both reached out to Perficient about being a key partner in bringing the two companies together, which would likely lead to more leads and higher sales.

The battle between Carl Icahn and Dell Technologies in its bid to go public is heating up. Icahn is now taking Dell to court, alleging the company didn’t disclose financial information related to its VMware stock swap plan. He’s calling for Dell to let him look at material information regarding the deal. Dell, meanwhile, is defending its actions and the shareholder vote will still go on as planned for Dec. 11.

Ingram Micro’s partner conference took place in Washington, D.C., where cloud and security led the conversation. The company unveiled a strategic alliance with CenturyLink, providing a hosted private cloud service to the channel. Ingram also boosted its managed security services business, partnering with Arctic Wolf Networks and Binary Defense. Both partnerships deliver Security Operations Center-as-a-Service, threat intelligence and consulting services to the channel.