Apple leans on Cisco to sell more to companies
Print Edition
APPLE is leaning on Cisco Systems’ Internet networking expertise in its latest attempt to sell more iPhones and iPads to corporate customers.
The alliance announced on Monday calls for Cisco to ensure that corporate Internet connections relying on its gear deliver content quickly and securely to iPhones and iPads. Cisco will also help Apple develop ways for iPhones to interact more smoothly with workers’ office phones.
Financial terms of the partnership weren’t disclosed.
This is the second time in two years that Apple has teamed up with a major technology company that focuses on business customers. Apple joined forces with IBM Corp 13 months ago to build and sell business applications for the iPhone and iPad.
The aggressive push into the corporate market is part of Apple’s strategy to reverse a slump in the iPad. Sales of the pioneering tablet have fallen from the previous year in six consecutive quarters, reflecting competition from less expensive options and consumers’ aversion to upgrading to the latest iPads as frequently as they have with new versions of the iPhone.
More iPad sales
Apple is hoping to spur more sales of the iPad by making the tablet more useful for businesses. The Cupertino, California, company also wants to expand the appeal of the iPhone, its biggest moneymaker.
“All this makes perfect sense to me,” said technology analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy.
Apple’s intensifying focus on business customers has prodded the company to befriend former antagonists.
The notion of Apple and IBM helping each other out once would have seemed inconceivable because they were such bitter rivals in the personal computer market. The animosity ran so high that Apple famously skewered IBM as a soulless company devoid of new ideas in a television commercial that evoked images of novelist George Orwell’s “Big Brother” figure in “1984.”
Although Apple’s ties with Cisco never got that nasty, the two companies locked in a legal skirmish over rights to use the terms “iPhone” and “iOS,” the software that powers Apple’s mobile devices.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
