Forrester analyst Tim Sheedy writes in a new report that “The Internet and the mobile Internet have effectively combined.” Facebook users who access the social networking site through a mobile device are twice as active as users who don’t. It’s no surprise then to see the announcement of Salesforce.com‘s Chatter Mobile, a mobile client for the company’s increasingly popular Chatter social networking and microblogging platform.
Chatter Mobile apps for BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone and the new iPod touch will be available in late 2010, with Android support coming in the first half of 2011.
Chatter’s simple, Facebook-like interface accomplishes the goal of most enterprise 2.0 platforms: making enterprise technologies as accessible as consumer technologies. According to Kraig Swensrud, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at Salesforce.com, Chatter is its most successful product launch yet. The product, which came out of beta in June, is now in use by 20,000 companies. Many are Salesforce.com CRM customers, but many new customers are also picking up Chatter and using it independently of the company’s flagship product. Some companies, like Nokia are even deploying Chatter enterprise wide.
Saleforce.com’s mobile CRM app has also been successful, with over 250,000 downloads from the Apple App Store and over 100,000 from the BlackBerry App World.
Salesforce.com is aggressively targeting enterprise mobility and social networking as several competitors are eying the same space. Yammer recently announced it will expand beyond microblogging into general enterprise social networking and RhoLogic recently released a mobile SugarCRM client. Expect to see this space heating up more in coming months as mobility continues to mainstream.
See our coverage of Chatter from June for more information the service.