Catalyst, an internal iPad app developed by Medtronic.

In a third-quarter earnings call with investors, Apple senior vice president and CFO Luca Maestri listed medical device giant Medtronic as a headline example of a company creating a lot of iOS apps to use internally.

"Today companies have equipped millions of employees with iPhones and they’re seeing huge benefits in productivity, employee satisfaction, and profitability," he said. "For instance, medical device leader Medtronic has developed over 175 internal iOS apps for over 16,500 iPhones used by its employees to facilitate sales, improve productivity, and ensure that essential marketing materials are up to date."

MobiHealthNews wrote about one internal Medtronic app last year -- an iPad game that surgeons can use to practice new procedures or sales representatives can use to convince surgeons to adopt those procedures.

"Before these types of interactive training simulations, a surgeon didn’t have a reason to learn better ways to do a spine surgery if he’s in a comfort zone,” Leif Goranson, a training and education specialist at Medtronic, said in a presentation at the Games For Health conference last year. “If he feels like there’s a new and better way, he might try that or he might at least try to get educated on that.”

Apple's choice to highlight Medtronic's iOS app portfolio was likely linked to Apple's recent enterprise bid and partnership with IBM, which CEO Tim Cook delved into in deeper detail on the call. He said that while Apple has high market share in business, their penetration is only at about 20 percent, whereas notebooks have a penetration of around 60 percent.

"We think the big thing that unleashes [improved market penetration] is a better go-to-market, which IBM clearly brings to the table," he said. "But even more importantly, apps that are written with mobile first in mind. Many of the enterprise apps that have been written for iPad have been essentially ports from a desktop arrangement that haven’t taken full advantage of mobile."

When asked whether the IBM partnership signaled a move into big data or analytics for Apple, Cook made it clear that IBM and Apple weren't endeavoring to step on each others' toes in the partnership.

"Generally speaking, I think each of us has revenue streams in the enterprise and each of us wins by having those revenue streams," he said. "We win if we can drive that penetration number from 20 to 60. That would be extremely exciting."

Of course, Cook also took the opportunity to remind analysts on the call about Apple's forthcoming HealthKit developer tool, including a little more information about the app Mayo Clinic is developing in partnership with Apple.

"We’ve created a new tool for developers called HealthKit, which lets health and fitness apps work together and empowers customers to choose what health data they share," he said. "We’re taking the first steps in this area in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic, whose new app can automatically receive data from a blood pressure cuff, for example, and share it with a physician. Or a nutrition app that can inform fitness apps how many calories are being consumed each day. Our own Health app will provide an easy to use dashboard of all health and fitness data."