Steve Jobs is famously quoted as saying: “What I love about the consumer market, that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it, and every person votes for themselves.” However, after today’s announcement, it’s reasonable to assume, in the years since Job’s comments, Apple’s views around the enterprise market have been revised.

Indeed, Apple will likely continue to be predominantly perceived as a B2C organisation; but following the rise of enterprise mobility and BYOD in the workplace, Apple knows only too well its potential in this market. In fact, through the years, Apple has already partnered with a number of enterprise brands including IBM, SAP and Cisco.

In a Bloomberg interview, from June 2017, Tim Cook expanded on this trend, saying: “For most enterprises, iOS is the preferred mobile operating system. IOS is a fantastic platform because of the ease with which you can write apps that are great for helping you run your business efficiently or interface with your customers directly. We see many, many enterprises now writing apps. Well, what do they use to write the apps? They use the Mac. The Mac is the development platform for iOS.”

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According to today’s the announcement – made ahead of Salesforce’s customer conference, Dreamforce, which kicks off tomorrow, in San Fransisco –  working with Apple, Salesforce will redesign its app to embrace the native mobile platform with exclusive new features on iOS.

The organisations will also produce tools and resources for Salesforce developers to make 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.

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“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. “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 number one CRM platform with iPhone and iPad, the world’s best devices for business,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and co-CEO, Salesforce. “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 companies are also working together to accelerate developer learning and career growth.  Apple is beginning a new Get Started with iOS App Development Trail that will instruct people how to build native iOS apps in Xcode with Swift.

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