From The Editor | July 24, 2014

Apple, IBM Deal: You're The Winner

Matt Pillar

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

You couldn’t possibly have missed this, but in case you did, Apple and IBM announced a partnership last week that’s sure to create an even more rabid appetite for iPhone and iPad deployment in retail. At least, I think it’s sure to drive iOS mobile adoption in retail, assuming retail is one of the deal’s target markets. You see, details on the partnership are a bit sketchy. Here’s what we know:

  • Apple and IBM will offer a new class of more than 100 industry-specific enterprise solutions including native apps, developed exclusively from the ground up, for iPhone and iPad.
  • IBM will offer cloud services that are optimized for iOS, including device management, security, analytics and mobile integration;
  • Apple will support users via a new AppleCare® service and support offering tailored to the needs of the enterprise
  • IBM will create new packages for device activation, supply and management

As I said, not a lot of detail here about the specific enterprise apps the two are working on, but at this point, that’s neither here nor there. The big news is that Apple, which has long-spurned the advances of the business user community, couldn’t make a more overt announcement of its new “all in” attitude about the enterprise than to partner with Big Blue itself, the one-time Nemesis of Steve Jobs, the anti-Apple, if you will. 

IBM aside, that Apple is chasing the enterprise is only surprising because it’s just now happening. At all levels of retail, the clamor for iOS devices in recent years has been frenetic. Apple played it cool, neither encouraging nor denying nor supporting enterprise applications. It focused on its technology and the user experience it was creating and let the pieces fall where they did. Now, as iPad sales remain robust compared to tablet competitors but fall a bit flat of Apple’s expectations (down 9 percent in the third quarter), the company is finally making the decision to broach the enterprise market, hand-in-hand with the undisputed champion of business IT, no less.

As for those apps, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a vague hint in a release on the deal.

“For the first time ever we're putting IBM’s renowned big data analytics at iOS users’ fingertips, which opens up a large market opportunity for Apple,” he said. That comment should elicit some excitement from a retail community that’s been subject to an Apple relationship that’s only begun to lead off first base, with customer-facing apps and a bit of POS activity.

While Cook acknowledged the go-to-market advantage IBM brings to the table, he also stressed a continued focus on the mobile user experience, saying apps that are written with Mobile First in mind are a game changer. “Not all but many of the enterprise apps that have been written for iPad have been essentially ports from a desktop arrangement and haven’t taken full advantage of mobile,” he said.

Aside from retailers, I think the retail technology channel (value added resellers [VARs], integrators, distributors) stands to gain from the partnership. If Apple is looking to IBM to serve as a conduit to device adoption in the enterprise, it will likely have to become amenable to channel distribution. That’s good news for VARs, who have largely been left to their own devices and a scattered cottage industry of software developers to meet the call for iOS in retail. Now, they’ll likely be given an opportunity to sell IBM and Apple-backed applications on packaged, certified, supported devices. Of course, that means the deal may be threatening to the aforementioned cottage industry of iOS for retail application developers. I say maybe, because we still don’t know much about the applications IBM and Apple are working on.

What do you think a future with IBM and Apple holding hands looks like? Share your opinion in comments.