Virginia Rometty, IBM
IBM dismisses Forbes report on largest ever layoff.Reuters

Apple and IBM announced a deal on Tuesday to release over 100 new exclusive mobile applications for the corporate world to target retail, healthcare, banking, travel, transportation and telecommunication sector.

Following the announcement of the deal, IBM shares rose 1.9 percent, while Apple shares surged 1.3 percent.

IBM has attempted to shift to software sector as the company hopes to earn over half of its profit in 2015 through software sales.

"We wanted to focus on creating an absolutely irresistible workflow and processes and a design of apps that can be used by every user in the organization," Reuters quoted Bridget van Kralingen, IBM's senior vice president of global business, at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.

"We wanted to remove some of the existing barriers of mobile in enterprise," she added, by relating the worries of chief information officers about security issues of cloud computing systems among smart phones.

IBM has also planned to come up with wireless cloud computing services for Apple devices.

"This deal is a very targeted attempt by Apple with the help from IBM to focus on the enterprise, corporate market which has really been the main business of Blackberry," chief investment officer, Tim Ghriskey from Solaris Group in New York told Reuters.

IBM will sell Apple devices loaded with exclusive business apps for the corporate group. Moreover, the company will also launch Apple Care service centres at enterprise level, besides offering special packages for devices.

In 1985, Steve Jobs had said in an interview that the world would enter the dark ages, if IBM becomes successful.

Moreover, Andy Hertzfeld, an American computer scientist in 2009 posted the photograph of Jobs, clicked in 1983, revealing his rebellious spirit for IBM.

Three decades later, the former rivals have agreed on an exclusive partnership for the first time in history.