Tim Cook: Apple's sales to businesses grew 40% this year, to $25 billion

On today's quarterly earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook identified the enterprise market as a "major growth vector" for the company, with $25 billion in revenue - up 40% over the same period last year.

Apple has been aggressively pushing into the enterprise market, partnering up with the likes of old-school tech giants like Cisco and IBM to make the iPhone, iPad, and Mac a lot friendlier to a workplace market.

Since the iPhone launched in 2007, people around the world have wanted to use it at work, but there have always been roadblocks.

Apple is great at usability and design, which makes people want to use their iPhone a lot more than, say, their company-issued BlackBerry and a clunky old Windows laptop.

But Apple is a very consumer-focused company and doesn't have the expertise to make its devices super-friendly to the all-important IT department, with security and compliance controls or specialized line-of-business apps.

Hence those crucial partnerships with enterprise-focused tech companies like Cisco and IBM, alongside smaller companies like Box. They can help Apple make its stuff more appealing to the business buyer.

Appparently, the approach is bearing fruit, if enterprise revenues are growing that quickly. Now that everybody on earth knows they want an iPhone, Apple can focus on pushing them into every office.