Apple is working with more than 40 companies to help save the iPad

Apple Inc., grappling with swooning sales of the once-blockbuster iPad and sensing an opening in the changing ways of work, is making its broadest assault to date on business computing. The technology giant is working with more than 40 technology companies—many of them little-known makers of apps for accounting or sales presentations—to make the iPad a more appealing work tool. The initiative is a bet that Apple, which has never been a big player in the $2 trillion annual spending on workplace technology, can grab a bigger slice of the market by reshaping the nature of work in mobile-friendly settings—where Apple has an edge. Along the way, Apple is doing unnatural acts for a company that traditionally has charted its own path in the consumer market, without much help from others. Apple is inviting officials from accounting firm Xero Ltd. and other partners in the business-app program to train Apple business specialists. Apple invited some of its allies to present at an Apple sales conference in March in Huntington Beach, Calif., an event that is typically closed to outsiders, said people familiar with the program.