Apple has reportedly hired a dedicated sales team as part of its aggressive plan to expand to business enterprises.
The sales team will be meeting with dozens of developers and potential clients from banking and financial services sectors. Apple hopes that the new strategy will help the company to recover from the slow revenue growth brought by the declining sales of its iPads, according to Reuters.
Apple announced in July that it had forged a partnership with IBM to develop business apps that will be integrated into iPads and iPhones. The company did not provide further details about the products, but Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an earnings call last month that it "could change the way people work."
Apple is interested in the enterprise market because device sales in that sector could increase the company's revenue, although it is still uncertain if it can beat existing players, such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Oracle and SAP.
Two sources of Reuters, who are both familiar with Apple's plans, said that the company has partnered with software developers ServiceMax and PlanGrid, along with others. The dedicated sales team is negotiating with more than 30 CEOs from different businesses, including Citigroup. Closing a deal with at least one business will mean thousands of iPads and iPhones.
"The field service market alone is a $15 billion market," ServiceMax chief marketing officer, Stacey Epstein, said to Reuters. "One of our accounts may have thousands of field service technicians. It's a huge market opportunity for Apple."
Apple refused to comment about the news.
Apple's latest strategy came at the right time. Mac Rumors reported that iOS device activations took the lead in the enterprise sector with 69 percent, compared to Android's 29 percent share for the third quarter of this year.
There is also a two percent growth for Apple's devices, while Android dropped by two percent. Tablet activations are also dominated by Apple with 89 percent market share.
