IBM

Apple and IBM first joined forces in July, when they announced their partnership in an effort to "transform enterprise mobility" by building and expanding industry specific iOS applications and supporting cloud services.

Described by Bridget van Kralingen, SVP of IBM World Business Services, the collaboration "aims directly at the new quest of business—smart technologies that unlock new value at the intersection of big data and individual engagement, [and] combines IBM’s industry expertise and unmatched position in enterprise computing, with Apple’s legendary user experience and excellence in product design to lift the performance of a new generation of business professionals.”

On Tuesday Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) announced that it will be joining technology and consulting giant, IBM, in an effort to "transform enterprise mobility." In other words, their goal is to improve and expand upon industry specific iOS applications to help companies "achieve new levels of efficiency, effectiveness and customer satisfaction—faster and easier than ever before." The partnership combines Apple's consumer experience, hardware and software development expertise and developer platform with IBM's big data and analytics capabilities, as well as its huge number of technology consultants and software engineers.

The enterprise will be known as "IBM MobileFirst for iOS" and, as part of the agreement, IBM will begin to sell iPads and iPhones with industry specific solutions. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, "iPhone and iPad are the best mobile devices in the world and have transformed the way people work with over 98 percent of the Fortune 500 and over 92 percent of the Global 500 using iOS devices in their business today... 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