Apple and IBM released 10 apps this week designed for businesses and governments. The apps are the first to come out of the tech companies’ new partnership and target sectors such as air travel, banking and retail. Apple is looking to put new life into its lagging iPad sales by drawing business users, while IBM hopes to catch up in the mobile space. The two companies are working with 50 corporations to create apps for Apple mobile devices; the next round is slated for release early next year.

“The apps, including tools that can help pilots better utilize fuel or give cable repairmen more useful analytical data in the field, are the first big test of the accord between the one-time rivals,” reports Bloomberg. “The programs aim to marry IBM’s analytical data and back-office abilities with Apple’s experience designing user interfaces along with the mobility of its iPads and iPhones.”

The 10 IBM MobileFirst apps, released this week for the iPhone and iPad, are designed for governments and business customers in airlines, banking, financial services, insurance, retail and telecommunications.

“They are apps that are really complete services that IBM can deliver to large corporations and tie into their existing workflow,” explained Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing. “They’re very easy to use, fun and built completely ground-up for mobile, but they’re incredibly complex, powerful, tying into their back-end, large data systems for rich intelligent analytics.”

“The companies haven’t disclosed details of their financial arrangements,” notes The Wall Street Journal. “In addition to revenue from selling the apps, however, IBM expects to win new consulting business associated with customizing programs for individual customers and enabling the apps to exchange data with their back-end software systems.”

The Apple-IBM partnership was first announced five months ago.