IBM and Apple have reached the 100 app milestone in their mobile app partnership.
The companies have now built over 100 IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps for 65 specific professions across 14 industries – from wealth advisors to flight attendants, first responders, nurses and retail buyers.
The portfolio is also being extended to new industries such as consumer products, automotive, aging and chemicals and petroleum.
Each app combines IBM’s big data and analytics capabilities with Apple’s user experience.
IBM is planning to integrate some future iOS apps with the cognitive capability of Watson, which the company says will help the apps learn on the requirements of employees and customers over time.
IBM general manager of Apple partnership Fred Balboni said: "Our apps — which currently represent an exclusive level of business value — are evolving to deliver cognitive capability that refines insights to the most relevant information, enhancing the quality of decision making.
"Marrying the simplicity of Apple’s product design with IBM’s unmatched security, analytic and cognitive expertise is the leading edge of mobile-led business transformation."
Apple and IBM also aim to capitalise on the enahanced power, performance and larger screen size of the iPad Pro, taking advantage of its multitasking features to enable employees to work side-by-side in two apps simultaneously.
Apps with support for Apple Pencil will deliver new precision and functionality for tasks like design and lay out of a room, logging transactions or annotating maintenance logs.
