Salesforce has announced a mobile version of Chatter, its enterprise social networking platform. The product will be available for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android and Blackberry.
The company points out that people who use Facebook through a mobile device are twice as active on the site than non-mobile users (according to IDC), and that mobile devices are beconing "the new enterprise desktop" for over 50% of the workforce. With these things in mind, Chatter Mobile should be a significant part of Chatter’s future.
"Chatter Mobile means you can know what is happening in your entire enterprise, wherever you are," said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. "The combination of devices like the iPad or the new iPod touch with mobile apps like Chatter that push information to you in real-time are making the desktop obsolete."
Salesforce launched Chatter in June and there are already about 20,000 companies using it, according to Salesforce. In addition to that, Salesforce has already had 250,000 downloads from the Apple App Store and 100,000 from BlackBerry App World for its CRM apps.
Chatter Mobile is free to Salesforce CRM and Force.com subscribers. The apps will be available later this year for BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. The Android app will be out in early 2011.