Dive Brief:

• Apple and IBM Wednesday revealed that the partnership between the two companies announced last summer has led to the development of 10 business apps for iOS.

• The package has been dubbed IBM MobileFirst for iOS solutions. The apps have been developed to be suitable for companies of any size for iPhones and iPads, software that is generally referred to as “enterprise class.”

• The apps are designed to work with IBM’s analysts and cloud services with a level of security required by big business. Sources told Mashable that the apps were developed in Apple’s Swift programming language for iOS. 

Dive Insight:

This series of apps is designed to help retail companies of all sizes — including larger ones — move many of their operations to mobile and the cloud. The apps can facilitate logistics like in-store pickup, inventory data, in-store navigation, sales and upselling, tracking of past purchases, product location, and shipping services of various stripes. For example, shipping an item to a customer that is out of stock in store.

This pushes IBM into retail applications, but, as StreetFight magazine notes, the fleet of apps faces many similar challenges that startup apps do, namely, that retailers aren’t always ready at the back end for logistical systems that the apps support.