Apple-IBM venture offers up first iOS apps

With the new IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps, such as Passenger+ (pictured), Apple aims to fly deeper into corporate kingdoms. Apple/IBM

The partnership between Apple and IBM is starting to bear fruit.

The companies, which in July struck a deal to deliver mobile apps to big businesses, on Wednesdayreleased 10 apps as part of the IBM MobileFirst for iOS product line. The apps span industries including airlines, telecommunications, insurance, banking and government, and are all designed for corporate customers.

Plan Flight, for instance, is designed for pilots to manage their in-flight activities to help airlines save costs, while Passenger+ is intended to help flight crews offer personalized services to passengers in-flight. Another, called Retention, targets the insurance industry to help agents keep top customers in the fold. The government-focused apps focus on helping caseworkers and on crime prevention.

Companies among the initial wave of adopters are Citi, Air Canada, Sprint and Banorte.

In time, the Apple-IBM venture aims to create over 100 vertical-focused enterprise apps built for the iPhone and iPad. 

In addition, IBM's cloud services will be optimized for iOS, and the giant enterprise-focused company will sell Apple products bundled with the software to companies around the globe. Apple's support platform, AppleCare, will also be tailored for IBM customers and include on-site support from IBM employees.

The move was a surprising, but also exceedingly important, one for Apple. Over the last few years, Apple has talked up the increasing use of its products in the corporate world. 

With each quarterly earnings call, the company's executives have shared how many Fortune 500 companies have so far adopted or tested iOS products. As of this writing, nearly all are at least testing the company's products to see if they make sense for corporate use.

"This is a big step for iPhone and iPad in the enterprise," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement. "The business world has gone mobile."

Skype 5.1 For iPhoneAnnounced

Skype continues to improve on their iOS offerings by rolling out Skype 5.1 for iPhone (which is a 44MB download), where it will introduce a slew of new features and improvements, where among them include a new press and hold action so that users are able to do away with conversations from recent chats – pretty nifty for those “empty” chats, no? Apart from that, you are also able to perform an edit on a chat message. Sneaky! Apart from that, one is able to tap the “add favorites” link in order to easily fill up your favorites screen with those whom you happen come into contact the most. 

The People list is now capable of matching the desktop better, since there is a spanking new “Skype” filter, while the “online” filter will be able to include users set to online, away and do not disturb. 

These filter settings can be saved too, of course. Microsoft’s Skype intends to continue rolling out additional features to the app, and when the time comes, they will roll them out in order to deliver maximum benefit to the masses. 

Interestingly enough, it was just slightly more than last week that Skype introduced Skype 5.0 for iOS , so it is refreshing to see how fast the next update came about.

iOS 8 adoption target for iPad

People are always comparing iOS to Android and this has generated some interesting debates, as there are pros and cons for both platforms, but when it comes to adoption rates for a new version of either mobile OS, well it is Apple that claims the prize. Adoption rates are always higher for a new version of iOS because it is always compatible with almost all iPads, iPhones and iPod touches.

A recent study from Chitika’s analytics team has found that iOS 7 adoption for the iPad was 85 percent, which compared to 82.9 percent for iOS 6 is considered a great achievement. It is for this very reason why we believe that Apple will have an even greater iOS 8 adoption target for the iPad.

According to Chitika there has been greater growth in people using iOS 7 on the iPad over the last 3 months, which makes sense because some iOS users put off installing a new version until they know it is as stable and all the kinks have been ironed out.

We know that iOS 7 still has its issues, but it is far better than when it was first released. However, we hope to see what Apple has planned for iOS 8 on Monday during WWDC 2014. Apple will not go into as much detail as they usually do, as there is to be a greater focus on OS X 10.10 , but we should find out some of the main iOS 8 features.

One feature we hope to see is support for iOS to OS X AirDrop , as no doubt this could help increase adoption rate because this is something we have been wanting for several years now. It’s not just the iPad that had an increased adoption rate with iOS 7, as the iPhone also saw an increase to 89.7 percent, but we have to warn that these figures might not be as accurate, although there is still a clear increase.

Dropbox Sees Growth From 200 Million to 300Million Users in 6 Months

File sharing and cloud storage service Dropbox has announced that it has crossed the 300 million user mark. The announcement comes just six months after Dropbox had crossed the 200 million user mark in November. The 100 million user increase is also being attributed to Dropbox now focusing on rolling out more services, and improving its offerings for business users.

It is interesting to document the quick growth rate for Dropbox. Consider this, back in November 2012 Dropbox had a total of 100 million users. It took them one year to reach the 200 million user mark last year. Compared to that it has taken only six months to cross the 300 million user mark now. 

The official Dropbox blog just has a picture of door with the 100, 200, 300 million marks etched on the left side of the door frame. The blogpost is titled 'Thanks for helping us grow', with the caption 'New notch on the wall'.

For its phenomenal rise Dropbox seems mostly to have its Dropbox for Business service to thank. The shift towards a more business-focused approach has helped change the way it operates. It is to be noted that according to Forbes only around one percent of the users were paying for Dropbox's service whilst a majority of users were using it's free two gigabyte storage plan. 

Dropbox for Business has allowed users to maintain both personal and corporate accounts. In addition, Dropbox recently even acquired several new companies, such as the 3D photo app Bubbli, workplace chat solutions provider Zulip, as well as personal photo-stream app Loom and collaborative document tool Hackpad .

Apart from tweaking its Android and iOS apps, the company recently also announced the Carousel app - a cross- device photo gallery for users who use Dropbox for transferring images.