NEW YORK ¨C Apple Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are putting aside a rivalry started at the dawn of the personal-computing era to get more businesses to embrace iPhones and iPads.
The deal unveiled yesterday gives Apple access to an IBM sales force that will recommend Apple¡¯s devices to customers in industries such as health care and banking, which have never been priorities for the consumer-focused iPhone maker. IBM gets a boost in a long-running effort to sell software and services to companies seeking to manage workers¡¯ smartphones and tablets.
¡°We really recognized almost simultaneously that we could be uniquely helpful to one another¡¯s strategy and that there was literally no overlap,¡± Bridget Van Kralingen, IBM¡¯s senior vice president of global business services, said in an interview.
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