Apple and Salesforce Announce iOS Strategic Partnership

Apple Newsroom:

Apple and Salesforce today announced a strategic partnership that brings together the number one customer relationship management platform and iOS, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, enabling powerful new mobile apps for business. Working with Apple, Salesforce is redesigning its app to embrace the native mobile platform with exclusive new features on iOS. The companies will also provide tools and resources for millions of Salesforce developers to build their own native apps with a new Salesforce Mobile SDK for iOS, and a new iOS app development course on Trailhead, Salesforce’s free, web-based learning platform.

I don’t really know what this means, to be honest, but I do remember being deeply skeptical back in 2008 when Apple announced a bunch of “enterprise” related features for the then-new iPhone 3G. “Apple” and “enterprise” were just words that didn’t go together — until they did. Back then Microsoft, IBM, and Intel more or less ruled the enterprise market unchallenged. Apple has inexorably grown into this market as mobile has taken over the device landscape.

See also: This Reuters interview with Tim Cook and Marc Benioff indicates that a large part of this partnership is about Siri integration, which is also interesting.

★ Monday, 24 September 2018