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IBM, Apple Apps to Make Air Canada Less Awful

Apple's semi-official appearance at Mobile World Congress focused on business apps.

By Sascha Segan
Updated March 2, 2015
IBM and Appel

BARCELONA—IBM and Apple knocked Samsung's Knox at Mobile World Congress today by showing enterprise apps that are actually changing businesses, including a suite to make traveling on Air Canada better.

MWC Bug Art Apple never appears at trade shows like Mobile World Congress under its own name. But there are Apple people floating around with various types of badges, and Apple's clearly aware of this show: it scheduled its Apple Watch event press event for the Monday after MWC ends.

IBM's press conference here focused on the company's enterprise partnership with Apple, which merges the two companies' teams until they're "so integrated you don't actually know what different peoples' roles or organizations are," said Kathryn White, the IBM executive in charge of the partnership.

I might as well mention that it was scheduled at the same time as Sundar Pichai, Google's head of Android, was speaking on the main stage. I'm sure that's a coincidence.

White did all the talking - there were no actual Apple people on stage - but she made it clear that Apple is heavily involved in the design process for IBM's apps, whether they're for airlines, banks, investment advisors, or retail buyers.

"The partnership is as powerful a partnership as I've ever been associated with," she said.

Making Air Canada Better
IBM showed off three apps designed to improve airlines' customer experience. They're beautiful, simple, and easy. They're very Apple.

IBM, Apple Show Apps To Make Air Canada Less AwfulThe first one helps pilots calculate additional fuel. Four sliders and some back-end analytics replace an experience where pilots used to have to step through 20 screens, White said. She implied that Apple helped to design the apps, without saying it quite outright.

"Adoption is impacted by user experience. Married up with Apple's design expertise and passion for simplicity, it's just in their DNA," White said.

More excitingly for passengers, IBM showed Apple/IBM apps that let flight attendants keep an eye out for who's going to miss a connection and to rebook people while they're in the air, and apps that let gate agents immediately help passengers who suffer flight disruptions. Air Canada is the only airline IBM would confirm is using these apps.

"Air Canada is working with us on a number of the apps, and more in development as well," White said.

After this story was initially published, Air Canada wrote in to clarify what IBM said.

The company currently only uses the fuel-planning app, a spokesman said. "Additional features to our flight attendants' current app are under development, although it is too early to say which ones will get the go ahead or when," he said, adding that flight attendants would not rebook passengers themselves.

Air Canada also took issue with our headline, pointing out that they won several awards recently among North American airlines.

Knocking Knox
The IBM/Apple event comes as Microsoft, Samsung, and BlackBerry are all trumpeting their business-oriented solutions here at Mobile World Congress. Microsoft just made a deal with AT&T to sell Windows Phones to businesses, Samsung made sure to mention its Knox platform in the Galaxy S6 announcement, and BlackBerry has a press event tomorrow where it's going to talk about a cloud-based device management suite, special apps for Samsung devices and cross-platform business apps.

Apple dominates in business mobile devices, though, with mobile device management company Good saying Apple had a 69 percent market share in enterprise mobile devices - and 89 percent in tablets - in the third quarter of last year.

Editor's Note: This story was updated March 3 with comment from Air Canada.

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About Sascha Segan

Lead Analyst, Mobile

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I've reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also write a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsess about phones and networks.

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