Apple and IBM have just announced an unprecedented partnership to bring the iPhone to enterprise customers. In other words, you’re actually going to be able to use your iPhone for work.
The surprising partnership comes after years of hostility between the two companies, but now, the two will be working together to “help companies deploy wireless devices and business-specific applications to run on them”, applications which have long been scarce in the iOS ecosystem.
In an announcement today, Apple explained the pairing with its former rival as a complementing of skill sets:
The new [apps] will be built in an exclusive collaboration that draws on the distinct strengths of each company: IBM’s big data and analytics capabilities, with the power of more than 100,000 IBM industry and domain consultants and software developers behind it, fused with Apple’s legendary consumer experience, hardware and software integration and developer platform.
A description that, as the Wall Street Journal points out, would have seemed preposterous 30 years ago, when Apple’s famous 1984 commercial portrayed IBM is an imposing, fearful Big Brother. [WSJ]