As part of a new strategic partnership with Apple, Salesforce will release a Salesforce Mobile SDK for iOS by end of 2018 and redesign its iOS app by early 2019
Salesforce and Apple have announced a partnership “that brings together the number one customer relationship management platform and iOS.”
Context & Ripple Effects
Salesforce has spent three years stitching its CRM into every major platform: a broadened Microsoft partnership in 2015 brought Skype and OneNote integration, and a Google strategic partnership last year deepened G Suite ties. The missing piece was mobile-native depth on the platform where enterprise workers actually live.
For Apple, this extends an enterprise playbook it has run before — SAP signed a similar deal to build iOS apps and an SDK for HANA Cloud Platform in 2016, followed by an Accenture alliance to help companies migrate legacy apps to iOS. Salesforce is now the largest CRM vendor to get the same treatment.
First-order effects
- Salesforce's developer base gets a native Salesforce Mobile SDK for iOS by end of 2018, letting customers build custom CRM apps against Apple's platform rather than wrapping web views.
- Salesforce's own iOS app gets a ground-up redesign by early 2019, replacing the current client as the primary mobile surface for its user base.
Second-order effects
- Rival enterprise software vendors face pressure to match the depth of Apple integration — SAP already holds an equivalent deal, so differentiation shifts to which vendor's SDK ships faster and reaches more developers.
- Salesforce's other platform partners, Microsoft and Google, must weigh whether their integrations remain competitive if Salesforce's best mobile experience is iOS-exclusive.
Third-order effects
- If the SAP-Salesforce-Accenture pattern holds, Apple's route into the enterprise runs through SDK partnerships with dominant SaaS vendors rather than direct hardware sales — making native iOS support a baseline requirement for enterprise software rather than a differentiator.
The trend: Apple is systematically converting top enterprise SaaS vendors into native iOS development partners, one flagship SDK deal at a time.