Apple, SAP to Cooperate on Workplace Apps
May 05 2016 - 3:30PM
Dow Jones News
Apple Inc. and SAP SE said they would cooperate to help
developers create iPad and iPhone apps tapping the German software
firm's database services and analytics, the latest move in Apple's
push into the corporate world.
The companies said SAP will create a new software-development
kit for iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, that can broadly
access information from SAP's HANA cloud platform, one of the
company's flagship products. The two companies will also
collaborate on training academies for SAP developers.
The partnership with SAP is part of Apple Chief Executive Tim
Cook's strategy to sell more iPads and iPhones to corporations and
large organizations. The initiative is especially important
following a quarter in which iPhone sales declined for the first
time; iPad sales have fallen for nine consecutive quarters.
As part of Apple's push into the business world, it struck
partnerships with International Business Machines Corp. and Cisco
Systems Inc. to make its products work better in traditional
corporate environments. Last year, Mr. Cook said revenue from its
so-called enterprise business reached $25 billion in the 12 months
ended June 2015.
"We clearly see it as a very key growth opportunity," said Mr.
Cook in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, while declining
to provide an update to those figures. Mr. Cook said the
partnership with SAP will be a "starting gun" for the development
of workplace apps, similar to the opening of the App Store in
2008.
SAP Chief Executive Bill McDermott said the two companies hope
to take the vast amounts of data in SAP's systems and provide to a
broad base of corporate workers in fast, simple and easy-to-use
apps.
There is no revenue sharing in the deal.
Write to Daisuke Wakabayashi at Daisuke.Wakabayashi@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 05, 2016 15:15 ET (19:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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