It was a busy day for Apple Inc. with the announcement of a new partnership and an acquistion; the California-based tech giant and Salesforce.com announced a partnership bringing together customer relationship management (CRM) and iOS to redesign its mobile apps and allows companies to develop their own apps for business. This partnership, announced Monday means that Salesforce customers will be able to take advantage of Siri capabilities and shortcuts, facial recognition and an iOS software development kit (SDK).
“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 chief executive officer in the press release. He called the partnership a “powerful” way to deliver improved customer experiences for businesses.
Salesforce said in the release that it is redesigning its mobile app in collaboration with Apple to offer Siri shortcut capabilities that will integrate with the newly announced Einstein Voice, and it will also use Face ID, Business Chat and more. It’s also introducing the first mobile app for Salesforce’s training platform Trailhead, which is something customers on its community forum asked for more than two years ago.
Companies building apps through Salesforce Lightning will also be able to take advantage of this new Apple partnership, allowing them to create iOS apps on top of the apps created for industries and small businesses directly on Salesforce’s app store. They will be able to take advantage of Salesforce Mobile SDK, which is optimized for Swift, Apple’s modern programming language, which could help “build and deploy” apps for iPhone and iPad.
Apple said it is also launching an app to teach people how to build native iOS apps called Development Trail, calling it a step towards Apple and Salesforce’s belief in “democratization of technology and empowering developers, with any education or background.”
Shazam
Apple also announced Monday its official acquisition of music app Shazam after months long delay from the European Union over antitrust concerns.
According to a release Shazam and Apple have a long history, with the music app being one of the first apps available at the launch of the App Store. The Android version of Shazam will still be available and Apple says the platform will soon be ad-free for all users.
