Apple, SAP to Cooperate on Workplace Apps

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 [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 05, 2016 15:15 ET (19:15 GMT)

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