Apple’s Cook: $25 Billion in Enterprise Sales in Last 12 Months

Apple (AAPL), which last year inked an enterprise mobility deal with IBM (IBM) and last month signed another potential blockbuster partnership with Cisco (CSCO), has racked up some $25 billion from sales to business accounts in the last 12 months, chief executive Tim Cook told attendees at a Box (BOX) developers’ conference earlier this week.

“If you look at the last 12 months, (enterprise sales for Apple were) $25 billion,” Cook said, as USA Today reported. “This is not a hobby. This is a real business.”

The $25 billion in business sales is about 14 percent of Apple’s $182.8 billion in sales for the full fiscal year 2014.

Along with the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, Apple earlier this month rolled out the business centric, 12.9-inch iPad Pro, taking a page out of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Surface marketing playbook and positioning the tablet as a laptop replacement for business customers.

Cook reportedly told Box chief executive Aaron Levie in a public interview that sales to enterprise accounts can offer a notable revenue spike to the iPhone maker’s sales, using product security, its iOS platform and partner ecosystem as levers to gain entry.

Apple’s newfound desire to partner with former rivals also is by design more than random opportunity, he said.

“If you think back in time, Apple and IBM were foes. Apple and Microsoft were foes,” Cook said. “But if you look at it, Microsoft and Apple can work on more things together. It is great for our customers. That is why we do it. I don’t believe in grudges.”

For now, Apple’s backbone is peddling iPhones to consumers, and on the first weekend of the new iPhone’s availability the vendor racked up a record 13 million in iPhone 6s and 6s Plus sales, easily beating the 10 million mark its predecessor handsets posted.

“Sales for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple’s history,” Cook said.

As for what’s coming down the pike for Apple in the future, Cook reportedly said, “We’re in the early days of what we can do. My gosh, we haven’t started yet,” in perhaps an oblique reference to the rumored Apple electric car.