Apple Partnering With App Developers To Expand iPad Business Market

To that end, the company is apparently working directly with some 40 business app makers to make the iPad a more appealing and useful work tool.

The iPad has been tumbling since the first quarter of 2014, when it peaked at 26.4 million units shipped.

In order to compete in this new market (Apple traditionally shoots for the consumer market with all of its products), it has apparently invited outside officials from the business app world to train Apple business specialists.

Just yesterday, a report from Good Technology showed that the iPad is starting to lose its grip on the enterprise tablet market. As sales have started to dwindle, the Cupertino tech giant is searching for a way to spark enterprise interest in its tablets once again, reports the Wall Street Journal.

If Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) sticks to its naming style, the next small iPad is expected to be called iPad mini 4, the previous version was iPad mini 3, which didn’t go down well with many customers didn’t introduce any major hardware refresh. It’s an especially promising area for Apple, which – while not a leader in the office desktop environment – has a commanding presence with iOS as the enterprise mobile operating system of choice. The event saw Apple offering business app professionals a detailed insight on how to improve their software. Apple’s under-the-radar “mobility partner program” is reportedly aimed at changing that picture by providing enterprise users with a new suite of interconnected apps for accounting, sales, retail operations and other business tasks. Apple also partnered with worldwide Business Machines Corp. Apple wants to develop a more integrated ecosystem around the iPad for which it is encouraging the partner developers to design apps that are more useful and easy to use. Apple will likely demonstrate how the new iPads work with iOS 9 and split-screen app operation will be highlighted.

Apple is selling fewer iPads.