Apple and Salesforce.com Partner

Apple and Salesforce.com today announced a strategic partnership that brings together Salesforce's customer relationship management platform and iOS, Apple's mobile operating system.

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.

"We're excited to work with Salesforce and that their industry-leading CRM will embrace native iOS and deliver exclusive new features on iPhone and iPad," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, in a statement. "With the powerful combination of iPhone, iPad, and iOS—the best hardware and software for business—together with native Salesforce apps and the new Salesforce SDK, we can deliver great customer experiences for businesses around the world."

"With this partnership, we're bringing together the world’s #1 CRM platform with iPhone and iPad, the world's best devices for business," said Marc Benioff, chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce, in a statement. "Together, Salesforce and Apple are defining a new era of mobile innovation with native apps on iOS and empowering millions of people with access to Trailhead and the skills they need for the jobs of the future."

The initial focus areas of this strategic partnership include the following:

• Native Salesforce iOS apps for business Salesforce and Apple will redesign the Salesforce Mobile App to give customers rich experiences exclusively on iOS, with unique Apple capabilities such as Siri Shortcuts, Face ID, Business Chat, and more. Salesforce will also introduce the first ever Trailhead Mobile App, first on iOS. The partners will also deliver iOS apps for industries and small business that will serve their specific customer needs.
• Empowering Salesforce developers on iOS Apple and Salesforce are developing the first Salesforce Mobile SDK optimized for Swift, Apple's programming language. The native SDK, which is due out at the end of this year, will enable developers to build and deploy apps for iPhone and iPad on the Salesforce Lightning Platform.
• Accelerating developer learning and career growth: Apple is launching a Get Started with iOS App Development Trail that will teach anyone to build native iOS apps in Xcode with Swift.

The rebuilt Salesforce Mobile App will be available in early 2019; the Trailhead Mobile App will launch later next year.